NEW 

TESTAMENT 
NAMES 



M.B.RYAN 




Class (35^310 



Book 



ft i 



GoipgM - 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



NEW TESTAMENT 
NAMES 

A Study of Various Scriptural 

Appellations Used to Designate 

the Followers of Christ 



By 

M. B. RYAN 




CINCINNATI 

THE STANDARD PUBLISHING COMPANY 



Copyright, 1S17 K 
The Standard Publishing Company 






JUN2I 1917 



©CU470034 



iyi^t */$S (k-^,, 







CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction ,. . 5 

I Disciples 11 

II Friends 23 

III Christians 37 

IV Saints 58 

V Children 75 

VI Brethren 91 

VII Servants 107 

VIII Church 118 

IX Christian Experience 140 

X Christian Unity 168 

XI Christian Hope 186 



INTRODUCTION 

NO one believes the familiar saw, 
"There's nothing in a name." Every- 
one believes there is something in his own 
name. 

Names stand for things. There is in the 
name all that there is in the thing desig- 
nated. A great thing makes a name great. 

By this test, New Testament names 
are the greatest. In the sphere of religion 
Jesus Christ stands in the supreme place. 
The things that preceded him have been 
given new significance by him. The 
things that proceeded from him partake 
of his own significance and glory. The 
relationships which he confirms and es- 
tablishes are the highest possible. The 
experiences of the soul in entering into, 
and maintaining, these relationships, are 
the supreme experiences of life. The re- 
sult to the soul, from these relationships, 
is beyond measure or comparison. Who 

5 



INTRODUCTION 



can estimate the significance of salvation ? 
Who can measure the meaning of fellow- 
ship with God? Who can describe the 
value or potency of Christlikeness ? 

New Testament names stand for the 
things of Christ. Some of them are old 
names, familiar to us in the Old Testa- 
ment; but they have been lifted to new 
heights and filled with new meaning. 
Others of them came in with the new 
era which Christ inaugurated, and are 
charged with the immeasurable meaning 
of his work. 

The following studies are an attempt 
at an appreciation of some New Testa- 
ment names. It is believed that we can 
enjoy the life with Christ only in the 
measure in which we comprehend its 
meaning. For our enjoyment here is not 
sensuous, but spiritual. If we remain 
ignorant of what Christ has accomplished 
for us — of its meaning to us and for us 
— we miss the very source of Christian 
joy. We need the light of knowledge. 
What a wellspring of joy it is to be able 
to say "I know." What a gracious wish 



INTRODUCTION 



of the old apostle that his converts might 
"be filled with the knowledge of his will 
in all spiritual wisdom and understand- 
ing." It was only thus that they could 
"walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleas- 
ing, bearing fruit in every good work, 
and increasing in the knowledge of 
God." 1 

New Testament names are descriptive. 
The life with Christ is variously set forth 
in them. They are not unrelated or con- 
flicting. If there is more than one name 
applied to Christ's followers, it is because 
the life to which he leads us is many- 
sided. The different names are terms 
by which the Holy Spirit sets forth 
the richness of our relationship with 
Christ. 

A reverent study of the names helps 
us to understand and appreciate our 
heritage in Christ. This has been the 
sole aim in the writing of these chapters. 
There has come a personal enrichment in 
these studies, that the writer would fain 
pass on to others. If, in only a small 



»CoL 1:9, 10. 



INTRODUCTION 



measure, others shall be helped to share 
his larger joy, this will be good recom- 
pense. 

Such studies can not, in the nature of 
the case, be exhaustive. Who can de- 
scribe the glory of the mountains, or 
transfer to canvas the majesty of the sea? 
We can stand before them, with raptured 
eyes and bounding hearts. But their 
measure is beyond us. 

So, in contemplating the life with 
Christ. All its measures are infinite. We 
can but stand on its fringes and mutely 
gaze on its heights and depths. "It doth 
not yet appear what we shall be." May 
we not also say that no tongue can tell 
what we already are? If we be joined 
with Christ, we have partaken of in- 
finity. 

We may, however, "speak that which 
we know, and bear witness of that which 
we have seen." And the names which 
Christ has given to us help us to value 
these inestimable things. 

With these imperfect messages the 
sincere prayer of the writer would be 
8 



INTRODUCTION 



linked, that readers and author may alike 
come "unto all riches of the full assurance 
of understanding, that they may know the 
mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are 
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge 
hidden." 1 

Calgary, Canada. 



^oL 2:2, 3. 



I 

DISCIPLES 

"Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the 
nations." — Jesus. 

THE term "disciple" is used seventy- 
three times in the Gospel of Matthew. 
In sixty-nine of these instances it is ap- 
plied to the followers of Jesus. Mark 
uses it forty-four times, in only three of 
which he applies it to others than follow- 
ers of Jesus. In the thirty-eight instances 
•in which Luke uses it, only three refer to 
others; and in John's Gospel there are 
four applications of the term to others, out 
of seventy-seven instances of the use of the 
word. In the Book of Acts the word occurs 
thirty-one times, always designating fol- 
lowers of Christ. The Epistles do not use 
the term. Its use is peculiar to the records 
of the early period of the gospel, the time of 
heralding and inaugurating the Kingdom. 
11 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

The commission as recorded by Mat- 
thew makes the great task of the church to 
be the making and training of disciples. 
There is wondrous breadth and scope to 
this work. The field of operation is "all 
the nations." Back of it is the authority of 
Christ: "all authority in heaven and on 
earth." Associated with the command is 
a designation of a means to be used in the 
process : "Baptizing them into the name of 
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit." Appended to the commission is 
the gracious promise: "And lo, I am with 
you all the days, even unto the consum- 
mation of the age." x 

It is plain from this that the thing 
designated by the term "disciple" is a 
significant thing in the religion of Jesus. 
It is a relation which not only existed 
in his personal ministry in Judea and 
Galilee, but which he intended should be 
perpetuated down to the end of the age, 
and which should be realized among all 
the nations. It is a constituent element in 
the progress of his cause. 

*Matt. 28: 19, 20. 

12 



DISCIPLES 

A "disciple" is one who is taught or 
trained. It is the relation of scholars to 
a teacher that is indicated by the term. 
The distinctive thing about the use of the 
word in the New Testament is that it 
designates a relation to Jesus, as Teacher. 
Almost universally, there, this is true. 
There were disciples of John the Baptist, 
and disciples of the Pharisees. But the 
"disciples" of the New Testament books 
were followers of the young Galilean 
prophet, learners under him, differentiated 
from all others by having a different 
Teacher. The term thus emphasizes the 
thought of Christ as a Teacher, and the 
relation of men to him as scholars, being 
taught and trained under him. 

Two great facts receive emphasis 
here: 

I. The Need of Teaching in the 
Things of God. Ignorance of God is 
the fruitful mother of the sins which 
burden and destroy men. 1 On the other 
hand, the hardening of the heart which 
sin induces, deepens our ignorance of 

1 1 Pet. 1 : 14. 

13 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

God. 1 Man's life, in sin, swings in a vi- 
cious circle, from ignorance to iniquity, 
and from iniquity to deeper ignorance, 
the maelstrom ever converging toward the 
vortex of ruin. 

To know God and his will, man needs 
to be taught. There are many things 
man can find out for himself. He can 
discover matter, its properties, its laws, 
its history, by search. But spirit can 
only be known by revelation. God is 
Spirit. "Canst thou by searching find out 
God? Canst thou find out the Almighty 
unto perfection? It is high as heaven; 
what canst thou do? Deeper than Sheol; 
what canst thou know? The measure 
thereof is longer than the earth, and 
broader than the sea."' 

Spirit is known by what it says, or by 
what it does. There are some things we 
can learn about God by viewing what he 
does. His works speak his praise. The 
heavens declare his glory. The firma- 
ment showeth his handiwork. Day unto 
day uttereth speech, and night unto night 

iEph. 4:18, 19; Col. 1:21. »Job 11:7-9. 
14 



DISCIPLES 



showeth knowledge. 1 "For the invisible 
things of him since the creation of the 
world are clearly seen, being perceived 
through the things that are made, even 
his everlasting power and divinity." The 
providences of God are also vocal. "Be 
still, and know* that I am God/' is said in 
view of what God is doing in the life of 
the world. "The nations raged, the king- 
doms were moved; he uttered his voice, 
the earth melted.'" "Come, behold the 
works of Jehovah, what desolations he 
hath made in the earth. He breaketh the 
bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he 
burneth the chariots in the fire.'" 8 He 
leaves not himself without witness, in 
that he does good and gives us from 
heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling 
our hearts with food and gladness.* 

But the book of nature, while it tells 
us there is a God, and that he is a Being 
of divine power, glorious and skillful and 
beneficent, does not tell us what he would 
have us do. Teachers are necessary to 
bring a knowledge of his will. 

1 Ps. 19:1, 2. *Rom. 1:20. • Ps. 4$: 6-10. * Acts 14:17. 
2 15 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

In every age God has supplied man's 
need for revelation. In visions and 
dreams, and through angel visits, in the 
early days, men learned God's mind to- 
ward them. Later, his will to his chosen 
people was codified and published through 
his great servant, Moses. Still later, 
other prophets came as teachers of God's 
will, expounding the law, revealing new 
truth, illuminating the pathway of duty. 
And all the while, the eyes of men were 
turned anxiously toward the future, 
where it was believed the ultimate teacher 
in the things of God would appear, and 
where was to be realized that gracious 
promise : "All thy children shall be taught 
of Jehovah; and great shall be the peace 
of thy children." 1 

This teaching of God is a necessity, 
because the world is blinded. Men have, 
in many spheres, vastly broadened our 
knowledge by investigation. But it re- 
mains true that the world by its wisdom 
knows not God. 2 The humiliating fact 
stands, that many who have been heralded 

x Isa. 54: 13. a l Cor. 1:21. 

16 



DISCIPLES 

the loudest as discoverers and exponents 
of scientific truth, allege — and their alle- 
gation is a confession — that they can not 
find God. The microscope does not dis- 
cover him. The telescope does not reveal 
him. The scalpel does not liberate him. 
The drag-net does not confine him. "And 
therefore/' say the savants, "God is not." 

Vain men! Why expect to find Him 
thus? Their agnosticism is not a dis- 
proof of God. It is a proof of their own 
lack of vision. 

Over against this failure of men to 
discover God, and along with the fact 
that God has made himself known through 
teachers, in all ages, stands another great 
fact for our consideration: 

II. Jesus is the Supreme Teacher 
of God. It was to be expected that some- 
where in man's history one should come 
who should be a Master in this, the high- 
est of the philosophies; one who could 
make God known perfectly; one who 
should be an authoritative teacher of the 
will of God. Jesus Christ is that ultimate 
Teacher. 

17 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

1. Jesus claims this place. 1 

2. God assigns him this place. "This 
is my beloved Son; hear ye him." 2 

3. The Holy Spirit asserts his fitness 
for it: "In whom are all the treasures of 
wisdom and knowledge hidden." 8 

4. The teaching of Jesus stands the 
test. We are conscious, as we hear him, 
that we have at last found God. 

And that satisfaction is not disturbed 
by the succession of events. Many of the 
philosophies of the ages have gone to the 
scrap-heap. More of them are on their 
way there. The teaching of Jesus gains 
in freshness and pertinency and power 
with the passage of time. 

So, to be a disciple of Jesus meets the 
need of the soul for adequate and ulti- 
mate instruction in the things of God. 

Discipleship with Jesus has a twofold 
objective: 

First, in the disciple himself. Jesus 
said to the people of his day: "If ye abide 
in my word, then are ye truly my dis- 
ciples; and ye shall know the truth, and 

»Tohn 14:6-10. "Mark 9:7. 8 Col. 2:3. 
18 



DISCIPLES 



the truth shall make you free." 1 Here is 
a wonderful result. 

Sin is error — missing the mark. Sin 
is begotten of falsehood, and mothered 
by ignorance. The truth is God's anti- 
dote for sin. 

Jesus is the Truth. He is the teacher 
of truth. His teaching is not alone in 
what he says, but in what he is. He is 
God manifest. He is the Word which, in 
the beginning, was with God and was 
God, and which became flesh and dwelt 
among men. 2 He is full of grace and 
truth, and men behold his glory as the 
glory of the only begotten of the Father. 
The words of Jesus are the truth of God. 
"My teaching is not mine, but his that 
sent me." Men are challenged to test 
them, and prove whether or not they are 
from God. 

"Abide in my word." That is true 
discipleship. That means living the Word. 
It is the road to knowledge. "If any man 
willeth to do his will, he shall know of 
the teaching, whether it is from God or 

ijohn 8:31, 32. "Join 1:1-14. 'John 7:16. 
19 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

whether I speak from myself." "Ye shall 
know the truth." 

How true all this is to the very nature 
of things. We know by doing. Do we 
ever know without doing? Theoretical 
knowledge is knowledge of the theory. 
Practical knowledge is knowledge of the 
thing. Jesus is a teacher of life. When 
we live his teaching we understand him; 
we know the truth. 

Sin is bondage. "Every one that com- 
mitteth sin is the bondservant of sin." 1 
Sin is king in the sinner's life. It reigns 
in his mortal body. He is forced to obey 
the lusts thereof. He presents his mem- 
bers to it, as instruments of unrighteous- 
ness. The law of sin which is in his 
members wars against the law of his 
mind and brings him into captivity. 2 The 
truth makes him free. 

Truth frees us from error. It is 
light, dispelling darkness and showing us 
all things in their true shapes. Truth 
frees us from ignorance. It is the moun- 
tain-top, from which we can view the 

^ohn 8:34. » Rom. 6:12, 13; 7:23. 
20 



DISCIPLES 

whole landscape, as against the crater 
where our vision is circumscribed, and 
where what we see is distorted. Truth 
lived, frees us from friction. The true dis- 
ciple of Jesus no longer lives at cross- 
purposes with the Almighty. He wills to 
do the will of God, and life is attuned to 
the eternal harmony; it runs smoothly. 

What an illumination is here. What 
a revolution. What a tremendous van- 
tage-point for life. Now all the pregnant 
powers of life can bring forth their true 
issues. The noble aspirations of the soul 
are free now to mount the heights. Life 
is in its native soil. It can burgeon and 
bloom in beauty, and find its utmost ful- 
fillment. 

Second, in others, through the disciple. 
The disciple of Jesus is a channel. 
Through him, and on account of him, 
the blessing of Jesus is to pass on to 
others. 

This is what Jesus calls fruit-bearing. 
The disciple of Jesus is a branch in the 
vine. The disciple is in Christ, as the 
branch is in the vine. The life of Jesus 

21 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

is in the disciple, as the life of the vine 
is in the branch. The blessing of Jesus 
for men comes through his disciples, as 
the fruit of the vine grows on the 
branches. The fruit is the only thing 
about the vine in which its life can .be 
passed on to nourish and support other 
life. The ministry of the vine depends 
upon the branches. 

The true test of discipleship is in giv- 
ing Christ to others. Neither God nor 
Christ has any honor in a fruitless f fol- 
lower. "Herein is my Father glorified, 
that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye 
be my disciples." 1 



John 15:8. 



22 



II 

FRIENDS 

"I have called you friends." — Jesus. 

A FRIEND is a lover. 
It is a significant thing that Jesus 
offers to make his disciples his friends. 
It is not every teacher who takes his 
scholars into such close relationship to 
himself. Few teachers, if any, make that 
favor general among their scholars. 
Jesus makes the relationship possible to 
all his disciples. 

This name signifies an advance in dis- 
cipleship. Rather, it indicates what is the 
true character of discipleship with Jesus. 
It is not merely a corporate relation. It 
is personal. It is not a conventional con- 
nection between master and pupil. It is 
a heart-union. 

Friendship has been called the "mas- 
ter passion/ ' And rightly so. What 

23 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

splendid examples of its power we have 
in human history. How it burns away 
the hindrances and fuses hearts together. 
How it binds men with cords that nothing 
can break. How it defies even death, and 
continues green and beautiful when it has 
but a memory to feed upon. 

It is to this master passion that Jesus 
invites his disciples. Nay, this is the very 
essence of discipleship. "Even as the 
Father hath loved me, I also have loved 
you; abide ye in my love. ,,1 Here is a 
threefold strand of love: the love of the 
Father for Christ; the love of Christ, the 
Master, for the disciple; and the love ot 
the disciple, doubling back to Christ, and 
to the Father, who gave him. This realm 
of love is the abiding-place of the disciple. 
"Abide ye here" is the Master's gracious 
word. 

We are accustomed to the thought of 
Jesus as our friend, our lover. "Who 
loved me, and gave himself up for me." 2 
But we are apt to think of his friendship 
as being that of a benefactor, a patron, 

ijohn 15:9. * Gal. 2:20. 
24 



FRIENDS 



so to speak, far above us, separated from 
us by his rank, but stooping down to us 
to confer a benefit, as some powerful and 
wealthy man might befriend a destitute 
neighbor. This offer of Jesus puts a new 
face on the matter. It is not alone that 
he is our friend, but that we are his 
friends. It is not alone that he is stoop- 
ing to us, but that he is lifting us to him. 
It is as though the wealthy and powerful 
man should make the outcast pauper a 
member of his family, to sit at his table 
and live on most intimate terms with him. 
This is what Jesus does with his scholars. 
There are two significant things to be 
noticed about this friendship. 

I. Its Condition. "Ye are my 
friends, if ye do the things which I com- 
mand you." 1 

On first thought this is a drastic test. 
It is asking much. In any one else it 
would strike us as being arbitrary — per- 
haps tyrannical. "You can be my friends 
if you do as I say." 

There seems, at first sight, to be noth- 

^ohn 15: 14. 

25 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

ing mutual about that condition. It is all 
one-sided. In any one else that would 
seem to make even the beginning of 
friendship impossible; or, if friendship 
were begun, it would soon be ended. It 
is a great strain on friendship always to 
be yielding to commands. He who can 
always command is in danger of losing 
his respect for his subordinate. He who 
must always obey is in danger of losing 
his love for his superior. 

But with Jesus it is not so. We in- 
stinctively feel that this test is just; that 
he has the right to make it; and that it 
is consistent with our own dignity and 
rights to accept it. Moreover, we find 
that it works out well. Instead of ending 
friendship, it cements it. The more im- 
plicitly we obey him, the warmer our love 
for him grows. We find that all his com- 
mands are given in love and are meant 
for our good. We find that the way of 
obedience to him is the way of life for us. 
As it is with other friends, when they 
induce us to do things which turn out 
to our advantage, we are thankful to 

26 



FRIENDS 



them for it; our love for them grows. 
We see how pure and disinterested their 
friendship is, and we count it an honor 
and a joy to have them as our friends. 
So it is when we do the things which 
Jesus commands us. Every act of obedi- 
ence to him brings its blessing and leads 
into happiness. So our friendship is 
strengthened. 

This is one of the strongest proofs 
of the genuineness of the religion of 
Christ. It works out well. By doing it 
— living it — we prove its worth. It com- 
mends itself by use. 

No antichristian philosophy can stand 
that test. There are many "doubts" and 
"denials" and "disbeliefs" of this religion, 
and many substitutes are offered for it. 
But few of those who profess them have 
the courage to live them out. And were 
they to attempt to do so, they would see 
at once how false and unsatisfactory they 
are. Their use would be the surest and 
speediest road to their overthrow. But 
when a man obeys Christ, he finds him- 
self in the way of life, a way that 

27 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

broadens its blessings as he goes on. 
He finds that the prohibited things are 
the bad things, the destructive things; 
and that all the demanded things are 
good things, adding to him, enriching 
him, crowning his life with blessing. 

If this were not true, Jesus could 
never have risked the matter of friend- 
ship on such a test as this. He does not 
bid for our friendship, first of all, on 
what he is going to give us, but on what 
he is going to demand of us. That would 
ensure the ruin of friendship if his com- 
mands were not wholly beneficent. For 
friendship is a tender plant. It withers 
when mistrust has taken the place of 
faith. 

Now, this puts the matter of friend- 
ship with Jesus where all can reach it. 
The friendships of earth often rest on 
bases that are accidental or arbitrary. 
Sometimes it is the accident of birth. 
Sometimes the possession of wealth or 
power determines it. Sometimes it grows 
out of congenial temperament. 

Here, none of these things prevail. 

28 



FRIENDS 



Few of us could be friends of Jesus if 
they did. When Jesus puts friendship 
with him on the basis of obedience to 
him, he puts it where any one can fulfill 
the condition. For his commandments 
are not grievous. They can be obeyed 
by the humblest and the weakest. For 
"my yoke is easy and my burden is 

light.-' 

But, how shall the disciple begin? 
Where is the starting-point in this path- 
way of obedience? 

Right at our own door. Jesus gives 
us a test commandment. He tries us out 
with a demand which we might be 
inclined to shun. Were we left to our 
own choice, we might choose something 
far different. "Distance lends enchant- 
ment/' and we might choose the thing 
that was far off, as a measure of our 
spirit. 

But Jesus bids us commence at home. 
"This is my commandment, that ye love 
one another, even as I have loved you." 4 

A very necessary thing in the big 

1 Matt. 11:30. »John 15: 12. 
29 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

school he is founding. Yet, how often 
ill schools do jealousies and rivalries 
reign among the scholars. This school 
is also a family. The scholars are taken 
into equally intimate relations with the 
Master. The Master has loved each and 
all equally. "As I have loved you;" 
Here is the example. Here is the meas- 
ure also: "Try it. See if you have 
the root of this matter of friendship in 
you." 

After all, that's a sensible test. To 
be a friend of Jesus is to be a lover of 
Jesus — to be a lover of God. But he 
who says "I love God," while he hateth 
his brother, "is a liar: for he that loveth 
not his brother whom he hath seen, can- 
not love God whom he hath not seen." 1 
And Jesus says, "If ye love me, ye will 
keep my commandments." 2 "He that 
loveth me not keepeth not my words." 3 
There is no room to balk at this com- 
mandment while we aspire to be his 
friends. 

II. Its Results. 1. Revelation. 



*1 John 4:20. 3 John 14:15. 8 John 14:24. 
30 



FRIENDS 



Friendship is a relation of mutual con- 
fidence. The heart unlocks itself to a 
friend. Concealment gives place to 
revealment. 

That is what is meant when we are 
told God spake to Moses face to face, 
"as a man speaketh unto his friend." 1 
That is what is meant when Abraham 
is called "the friend of God/' 2 God 
revealed himself to Abraham, took Abra- 
ham into his confidence, told him about 
his plans, gave him promises that in- 
volved the far-distant future. And 
Abraham believed God, accepted his 
assurances, and was called the friend 
of God. 

Now, Jesus says: "No longer do I 
call you servants; for the servant know- 
eth not what his lord doeth." There are 
no confidences there. But: "I have 
called you friends; for all things that I 
have heard from my Father I have made 
known unto you." s 

We have here the clue to the knowl- 
edge of God and his will. We have here 

1 Ex. 33:11. *Jas. 2:23. 8 John 15:15. 
3 31 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

the real outcome of discipleship. The 
scholar of Christ has just one main 
quest — the knowledge of God. That, 
Jesus says, is "eternal life." 1 The secret 
of that is friendship with Jesus. He is 
the revealer of the Father. No one 
knoweth who the Father is save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
willeth to reveal him. 2 Jesus wills to 
reveal God to his friends, to those who 
love him. 

There is a great philosophy back of 
this. Revelation is not a matter of 
giving, only. It is a matter of receiving, 
as well If there is beauty, there must 
be sight to perceive it. If there is har- 
mony, there must be hearing to appreciate 
it. 

There is a blindness of the mind 
which shuts out "the light of the gospel 
of the glory of Christ." s There is an 
opening of the eyes necessary, that men 
"may turn from darkness to light and 
from the power of Satan unto God." 4 
Love is the great eye-opener. Friendship 

^ohn 17:3. a Luke 10:22. »2 Cor. 4:4. * Acts 26:18. 
32 



FRIENDS 

with Jesus prepares the heart to see God. 
Jesus reveals God to his friends because 
he can. "The natural man receiveth not 
the things of the Spirit of God: for they 
are foolishness unto him; and he cannot 
know them, because they are spiritually 
judged." 1 Discipleship with Jesus is the 
condition of knowing God. It is to 
those whom God has given him that 
Jesus gives the knowledge of God, which 
is eternal life. 2 And friendship with 
Jesus is the essence of discipleship. 
Those who come to know God come 
also to know Jesus Christ whom he has 
sent. 

If the knowledge of God were simply 
theoretical, it might be different. Then 
Jesus might sit, as a professor teaching 
a science or a philosophy, with nothing 
depending on his personal relation to his 
pupils. But the saving knowledge of 
God is personal. Jesus not only teaches 
God. He is God. To those who are 
his friends he gives himself, as any true 
friend does. So that we know him, and, 



M Cor. 2: 14. "John 17:2, 3. 

33 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

knowing him, we know God. The knowl- 
edge of Jesus the Christ, and of God, is 
one. 

2. Comfort. The friendship of Christ 
is a guarantee of all needed blessing. A 
true friend is always willing to help 
his friends. There is none so will- 
ing as Jesus. What he has done for 
us is the earnest of what he is ready 
to do. 

Then, Jesus is able. That can not 
always be said of friends.' Jesus is able, 
even unto the uttermost need. 1 All 
resources are in his power. 2 Moreover, 
Jesus is eager to help and to bless. 
Nothing is more striking than his solici- 
tude over men. He would have brooded 
over Jerusalem as a mothering hen broods 
her chicks. 8 His solicitude gives our 
souls rest. Our great Friend will supply 
our needs. We can obey the injunction: 
"Be anxious about nothing. But in 
everything by prayer and supplication 
with thanksgiving let your requests, be 
made known unto God." And we realize 



Heb. 7: 25. a 1 Pet. 3: 22. * Luke 13: 34. 
34 



FRIENDS 



the gracious promise: "And the peace of 
God, which passeth all understanding, 
shall guard your hearts and minds in 
Christ Jesus." 1 We put Christ to the 
test and find him true when he says: 
"Take my yoke upon you and learn 
of me; for I am meek and lowly in 
heart: and ye shall find rest unto your 
souls."' 

3. Redemption. Any good friendship 
is a blessing. To love a good person is 
to partake of his goodness. To. love 
Christ, to come near to him in friendship, 
to obey him, to yield life to him, is to 
escape out of the power of sin, to rise 
above self, to share his life; in a word, 
to be saved. When he is with us and 
we with him; when he is our familiar 
friend, our confidant, his purity burns 
out our lust, his nobility shames our 
smallness and meanness all away; his 
strength lifts us and girds us, his life 
thrills us and fills us, until we become 
like him. That is the sublime end and 
object of all redemptive purpose and 

iPhil. 4:6, 7. »Matt. 11:29. 
35 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

provision. The riches of the glory of 
God's great mystery of salvation is 
Christ in us, the hope of glory. 1 Lost 
humanity is restored, thus, to the image 
and fellowship of God. 

iCol. 1:27. 



36 



Ill 

CHRISTIANS 

"If any man suffer as a Christian." — Peter. 

IT has come to pass that the name 
applied to Christ's followers least 
frequently in the New Testament, is the 
most popular and universal now used 
of them. 

There are three instances of the use 
of the name "Christian" in the New 
Testament. Luke says that the name 
originated in Antioch in Syria. It was 
after Paul had come to help Barnabas 
in the work there. Sometime, during 
that great year in the life of that young 
church, "the disciples were called Chris- 
tians." There is not agreement among 
Bible students as to the origin of the 
name. It is not a vital matter in the 
present discussion. If it was given by 

1 Acts 11:26. 

37 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

the apostles, it would bear the credentials 
of apostolic inspiration and authority. 
If it was given by outsiders, and adopted 
by the church under apostolic leader- 
ship, the adoption was an authoritative 
sanction of its use. The pertinence of 
the name rests not so much upon its 
source, as upon its fitness. The form of 
the name would indicate at once to the 
people of that day the meaning which it 
still bears — "followers of Christ." It is 
often pointed out that in its construction 
it represents a significant conjuncture in 
spiritual things. "Christ" is Greek. It 
is the equivalent of the Hebrew "Mes- 
siah." The termination "ian" is Latin, 
signifying "follower of." The name 
thus represents the three great divisions 
of the human family, as well as the three 
great languages. As the superscription 
over the cross was written in the three 
languages, Hebrew, Latin and Greek, so 
this name represents them. It has the 
elements of cosmopolitanism in it. 

The second instance of the New Testa- 
ment use of the name is most interesting. 

38 



CHRISTIANS 

Paul had passed through most of his great 
ministry as an apostle. He was just 
completing a two years' imprisonment in 
Caesarea, and was awaiting passage to 
Rome, to have his case heard, on appeal, 
before the Imperial court. 

Chained to a guard, he stood before 
King Agrippa, and, in the presence of a 
noted assembly, representing the height 
of worldly wealth and power, told the 
story of his conversion to Christ. 

It was at a dramatic moment in that 
recital that King Agrippa said, perhaps 
in a tone of contempt: "With but little 
persuasion thou wouldest fam make me 
a Christian/' 

Paul does not use the name in his 
reply. But he acknowledges the relation. 
"I would to God that whether with little 
or with much, not thou only, but also all 
that hear me this day, might become such 
as I am, except these bonds," is a con- 
fession that he is himself what he would 
have these others to be — a Christian. 1 

The one other instance of the use of 



Acts 26: 28, 29. 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

the name was years after this. Perse- 
cutions were arising against the followers 
of Jesus, and perils were thickening about 
the groups which here and there pro- 
fessed his name. Peter, the rock-man, 
writes to his brethren, widely scattered 
in the Gentile world, not to think it 
strange concerning the fiery trial which 
was among them. Christ had suffered for 
them. They might rejoice to be partakers 
of his sufferings. It is a blessed thing to 
be reproached in the name of Jesus. It 
would be a shame for any of them to suffer 
as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil- 
doer, or as a meddler in other men's mat- 
ters. But if any man suffered as a Chris- 
tian — that was no shame. It was a glorious 
thing "to glorify God in this name." 1 

It is evident that, at the time Peter 
wrote, the name had come to be worn gen- 
erally by the followers of Jesus, of both 
Jewish and Gentile peoples, and that it 
was recognized by the outside world as 
their distinctive appellation. 

What does the name "Christian" 

1 1 Pet. 4: 12-16. 

40 



CHRISTIANS 



signify in the life of him who wears it? 

There is, perhaps, no vantage-point, 
from which to study this name, that is 
equal to that afforded by the life of Paul. 
He was a Christian. He evidently shared 
the name when it was first used. Late 
in his wonderful career he proudly con- 
fessed it. Can we doubt that at the end 
of his course he still gloried in it? Can 
we take him as an example, to find out 
its meaning? 

First of all, in the life of Paul, the 
name stood for a conviction. Paul has 
come to a new conviction about Jesus. 
Once he had repudiated Jesus. He is 
now convinced that he is the Christ, the 
Son of the living God. As such, all the 
hopes of Israel are fulfilled in him. Not 
only so, all the needs of the world are 
met in him. The great facts of the 
gospel are involved. The death, the 
burial, the resurrection, of Jesus. His 
divine Sonship. His exaltation and 
Lordship. His pre-eminence and abso- 
luteness. 

How Paul, in his teaching, dwells on 

41 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

these things. How striking the terms 
by which he sets them forth. These are, 
to him, the supreme facts. He contem- 
plates Jesus on the throne. All facts 
of history are subordinate to that, in 
interest and importance. All things else 
are of significance only in relation to 
this exalted Christ. 

This is evidently the faith of the 
early disciples. It is the burden of 
Peter's sermon on Pentecost, and of 
Stephen's momentous address. The 
essence of apostolic preaching was 
"Christ," and the things of his Kingdom. 
The "word" which the disciples went 
everywhere preaching when persecution 
scattered them, was this Christhood of 
Jesus, this divinity and pre-eminence of 
their Lord. The "Way" into which men 
and women entered in response to that 
message, was the way of surrender and 
service to the exalted Jesus. 

This it was that must have struck 
that giddy, pleasure-loving, populace in 
Antioch; this presence in the preachers, 
and in their converts, of a new and sur- 

42 



CHRISTIANS 



prising conviction — a conviction that 
thrilled them, that clarified their thought, 
and gripped their conscience, and sub- 
dued their wills, until they were moved 
into complete divorcement from their old 
life, into supreme devotion to the new. 
It was an amazing thing that Jews were 
giving up their immemorial customs, for 
which they had hitherto been willing to 
suffer ridicule, and even death; and that 
Gentiles were forsaking the altars of 
their fathers and their countrymen; and 
that both were meeting and being bound 
together in a unity of conviction. And 
the obvious rallying-point was Christ. 
Christ, whom these new preachers were 
heralding. Christ, whom, as Jesus of 
Nazareth, the Jewish people had repudi- 
ated. Christ, Whom Gentiles had nailed 
to the cross. Now Jews and Gentiles 
were receiving him; Jews, as the long- 
looked- for Messiah; Gentiles, as the Lord 
and Saviour. Jews and Gentiles, as the 
Son of the living God. The Christ was 
supreme with these people. They were 
Christ-ians. The conviction of the 

43 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

Christ was their distinguishing charac- 
teristic. 

It was so with Paul. There is no 
accounting for his conversion, nor for 
his life, except as this conviction is con- 
sidered. Great lives do not grow from 
shallow roots. Mighty streams are not 
gathered from meager and spasmodic 
fountains. Paul was not carried, like 
driftwood, on the bosom of the tide, He 
was rather like a mighty steamship, plow- 
ing its way straight toward its port in 
the teeth of the fiercest and most con- 
trary gales. Nothing but an overwhelm- 
ing conviction could have moved and 
sustained him. It was this conviction — 
the Christhood and divinity and pre- 
eminence of Jesus. 

And that conviction is always an 
essential in Christian faith. Men talk 
of being "Christians" without Christ. 
That is to say, they will deny Jesus that 
place and character which apostolic teach- 
ing gives him. They will, they say, go 
back of the apostles to Jesus himself, 
and see in him simply the best and the 

44 



CHRISTIANS 



greatest of men. But nothing divine 
about him, save what is latent in every 
man, and possible to him. No miracu- 
lous birth. No significance in his death, 
save devotion to a great cause — one of 
many martyrdoms. No real and actual 
resurrection from the grave. No supreme 
exaltation as universal Lord. Just one 
of the great ones — the greatest yet. But 
not exclusive, and probably not final. 
This faith men will profess, and claim 
to be still — "Christians." 

But this is not the Christian of the 
New Testament. It is not the Christian 
Saul of Tarsus was. This is a spurious 
"Christian," that does not deserve the 
name. 

In the second place, this name stood, 
in Paul's case, for a cause. Paul had 
espoused the cause of Christ. With his 
whole heart he had espoused it. He was 
willing to live, and to die, for it. It was 
in pursuance of this great purpose that 
he came before Agrippa. He had been 
arrested and imprisoned as a preacher 
of Jesus. His appearance before Agrippa 

45 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

was as a prisoner of the Lord — for the 
gospel's sake. His whole life was given 
up to the one great purpose of proclaim- 
ing Christ as King, and leading men to 
acknowledge him. 

This is not surprising. Any real 
conviction must find expression. It is 
one of the axioms of psychology that an 
impulse, a conviction, an ideal, denied 
expression, dies out. That fact is being 
recognized more and more, and accounts 
for many significant changes in methods 
of education. It is this, too, which lies 
behind the positive requirements of re- 
vealed religion. The Old Bible writers 
were scientific educators, guided to this 
by the Spirit of God. The pilgrim- 
ages of Israel, up to Jerusalem; the 
great feasts; the sacrifices; the congre- 
gational rejoicing — all these were expres- 
sions of the national emotion and con- 
viction, and reverence for Jehovah, 
which otherwise would have dwindled 
and disappeared. These opportunities 
for expression stimulated and kept fresh 
the fires of faith and devotion. They 

46 



CHRISTIANS 



fixed and fostered the religious spirit 
and consciousness, and contributed thus 
to the maintenance and growth of the 
religious life of the people. 

The ordinances and institutions of 
the Christian religion, also, have their 
reason in this. Baptism gives oppor- 
tunity for the conviction concerning 
Christ, and the impulse to receive him, 
to express themselves. It is a point 
where the individual can, by a conscious 
act of obedience and self-surrender, com- 
mit himself once for all to Christ. The 
assemblies of the believers, the public 
worship, the Lord's Supper central in 
the worship as a memorial institution, 
serve ' to give an outlet and fresh stim- 
ulus to the faith of the heart and the 
impulse to confess and honor Christ as 
Lord of the life. And the continuous 
service to which Christ calls men is a 
perpetual strengthener of conviction. 

This espousal of the cause of Christ 
is a necessary part of the content of the 
name "Christian." The conviction with- 
out the cause would be abortive and 

4 47 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

meaningless. Christ is not simply an 
idea. Christ is a person. And he is in 
the supreme personal relation to life. 
The supreme exigency of life is to get 
itself adjusted to him. The supreme 
task of the Christian is to proclaim 
Christ's right to rule in life, and to 
secure the recognition of that right on 
the part of men. The name "Christian" 
can never mean less than this to the true 
disciple of Jesus. It stands for all the 
enthusiasm of the recruit, for all the 
eagerness of the invader, for all the 
determination of the crusader, for all the 
imperial outlook and desire of the world 
conqueror. It can never meet its full sig- 
nificance in human life until Jesus Christ 
is acknowledged as universal sovereign. 
It was a great issue that thrust itself 
to the front between Agrippa and Paul. 
Agrippa was a king. He held his king- 
ship by appointment of the emperor of 
Rome. In him, as vassal, there was 
represented the might and the glory of 
the kingdoms of this world. All that 
the devil offered to Jesus in the wilder- 

48 



CHRISTIANS 



ness was here embodied before Paul. 

Paul stood for the entire reversal of 
all this. He was an obscure prisoner, 
chained by an iron chain to a creature 
of this mighty world-power. He was, 
perhaps, pale from long imprisonment, 
and poorly clad. He was without friends 
and surrounded by watchful and implac- 
able enemies. But he stood there in the 
presence of royalty, and in the midst of 
the fashion and power of this world, and 
claimed the right of Jesus the Christ to 
be King. It was Christ against Agrippa 
— against the emperor and the empire — 
and Paul was his champion. Nothing 
more dramatic has ever occurred. 

Yet, the essence of that is inherent 
in the person and posture of every man 
who, at any time, worthily wears the 
name "Christian." The same issue is at 
stake — Christ against the world. The 
Christian has as his supreme cause, to 
make Christ King. 

But, finally, the name "Christian" in 
Paul's life meant a character. This is its 
crowning significance. Conviction and 

49 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

Cause issue in Character, as root and 
branches issue in fruit. This is their 
logical terminus, as it is also their neces- 
sary complement. It is the final term in 
a trinity, that completes the meaning of 
this new name. 

This is the phase of it that is empha- 
sized in Peter's use of the word. The 
antithesis there is striking — murderer, 
thief, evil-doer, meddler, vs. Christian. 
It is character that is here contrasted. 

Here is where the supreme signifi- 
cance of Christianity was seen in the 
ancient world. Gentile life was largely 
a reign of lust, where impulse and pas- 
sion were the determining factors. Even 
the Jew had as his motto, "An eye for 
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." 

Jesus taught another doctrine. He 
taught purity, self-restraint, brotherli- 
ness, forgiveness, love, self-sacrifice, ser- 
vice for others. 1 And he lived what he 
taught. No man could be a true disciple 
of Jesus, a Christian, without attempting 
to make that teaching practical in his life. 

1 Matt. 5:38-42. 

50 



CHRISTIANS 



No man could consistently espouse and 
champion that teaching without an honest 
effort to live it himself. 

And Jesus made it possible for men 
to live it. He took men into vital rela- 
tions with himself — made them his 
friends, made them sharers in his life. 
So there came into the lives of his fol- 
lowers an amazing transformation. The 
old man was gone, with the lusts thereof 
— put away — shamed out of place by this 
intimate fellowship with Christ. There 
was a new man, created of God in Christ 
Jesus. The world saw the spectacle of 
men who had once been slaves of lust 
living pure lives; of men who had long 
been known as hateful, and hating one 
another, living together in love. Men 
who had been fornicators, idolaters, 
adulterers, effeminate, abusers of them- 
selves with mankind, thieves, covetous, 
drunkards, revilers, extortioners, had 
been washed, sanctified, justified, in the 
name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit 
of God. 1 In the purlieus of Corinth and 

1 1 Cor. 6: 11. 

51 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

Antioch and Rome, there shone a new 
light. Over against the wreck and ruin 
which sin works, there stood a new type 
of character. The world had no counter- 
part to it. There was but one possible 
source to which it could be attributed — 
Christ. These men were "Christians." 
A change as revolutionary had come 
upon Paul. As he looked back upon his 
past life he saw himself as the chief of 
sinners. 1 His sins were not of the same 
type as was true of many of whom he 
speaks. But they were as real, and per- 
haps more deadly. He was an "unbe- 
liever," and unbelief is the all-compre- 
hensive sin. He was a blasphemer and a 
persecutor, and injurious. 2 He had cher- 
ished threatening and slaughter in his 
heart, and had breathed them out against 
the disciples of the Lord. 3 In potency, 
he was a murderer. 4 He ravaged the 
church in Jerusalem, forcing his way 
into homes, and dragging men and 
women forcibly to prison. 5 He punished 



»1 Tim. 1:15. »1 Tim. 1:13. "Acts 9:1. * Matt. 5:21, 
22. »Acts 8:3. 

52 



CHRISTIANS 

the disciples repeatedly in all the syna- 
gogues. He strove to make them blas- 
pheme. He was exceedingly mad against 
them — frenzied. He persecuted them 
even unto strange cities/ 

If hatred and vindictiveness and 
cruelty, and the murderous passion, are 
ruinous to character, then Paul's past 
had been as bad as he thought it. Beside 
these major passions of the natural 
heart, the lower lusts, though shameful 
and destructive, are of smaller weight. 

Over against this forbidding picture 
we have to set that life which he lived 
by the faith of the Son of God. What 
a picture he gives us of the inner work- 
ings of his heart. What a life-story he 
tells. What a revelation of character, 
newly formed, transformed, under Christ. 
Who can sum up the significance of 
"gaining Christ," and being "found in 
him, not having a righteousness of mine 
own, that which is of the law, but that 
which is through faith in Christ — the 
righteousness which is of God by faith. 

1 Acts 26: 11. 

53 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

That I may know him, and the power of 
his resurrection, and the fellowship of 
his sufferings, becoming conformed unto 
his death, if by any means I may attain 
unto the resurrection from the dead." 
Was not that a wonderful change in the 
man who once disbelieved in Christ, and 
hated him and his people? 

And what could exceed the intensity 
with which he devoted himself to this 
new life, this Christliness of conduct? 
It absorbed him. Like the contestant in 
the games, he threw his last ounce of 
effort into it. It was the "one thing" of 
his life — "forgetting the things that are 
behind, and stretching forward to the 
things that are before, I press on toward 
the goal, unto the prize of the high 
calling of God in Christ Jesus." 2 

What a changed attitude toward men, 
we see. The cruel persecutor and de- 
stroyer has become the eager and sacri- 
ficial savior. He would willingly sacri- 
fice his own hopes, for the sake of his 
brethren, his kinsmen according to the 

1 Phil. 3:8-11. «Phil. 3:13, 14. 
54 



CHRISTIANS 



flesh. 1 Though he was free, he brought 
himself under bondage to all that he 
might gain the more. To the Jew he 
became as a Jew that he might gain the 
Jews : to them that were without law, as 
without law, that he might gain them. 
To the weak, he became weak, that he 
might gain the weak. He became all 
things to all men, that he might by all 
means save some. And all this he did 
for the gospel's sake, that he might be 
a joint partaker thereof. 2 

What does it mean when a man, so 
callous to others' sufferings as he once 
was, could say: "We were gentle in the 
midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth 
her own children; even so, being affec- 
tionately desirous of you, we were well 
pleased to -impart unto you, not the gospel 
of God only, but also our own souls, 
because ye were become very dear to 
us" ? 3 Or one so imperiously dominant 
of the consciences of others, saying: 
"Wherefore, if meat cause my brother 
to stumble, I will eat no meat while the 



Rom. 9:3. * 1 Cor. 9: 19-22. 8 1 Thess. 2:7, 8. 
55 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

world stands, that I cause not my brother 
to stumble." 1 

We are driven to the conviction that 
he spoke the truth when he said: "I have 
been crucified with Christ; and it is no 
longer I that live, but Christ liveth in 
me; and that life which I now live in the 
flesh, I live in faith, the faith which is 
in the Son of God, who loved me and 
gave himself for me."' And we see 
here the ultimate meaning for Paul of 
his being a Christian. 

So must it ever be — if "Christian" is 
to have its full significance for life. 
Christ's religion does not reach its logical 
conclusion in us until the Christ-char- 
acter is reproduced. This is the Chris- 
tian religion; viz., "Christ formed in 
you;"' "Christ in you, the hope of 
glory."* This is the meaning and the 
use of all that goes before. If we are 
in the school of Christ, shut up to him 
as teacher, it is that we may learn how 
to come into this perfect life. If we are 
enlisted in the cause of Christ, and called 



1 1 Cor. 8: 13. * Gal. 2: 20. » Gal. 4: 19. * Col. 1: 27. 
56 



CHRISTIANS 



to do battle for him, it is that we may 
work that knowledge into soul-fiber in 
the conflict. No Christianity is complete 
until it issues in likeness to Christ. Then 
is a man a Christian in reality. 



57 



IV 
SAINTS 

"All the saints in Christ Jesus." — Paul. 

THE name, or title, "saint" is of com- 
mon occurrence in the New Testa- 
ment. While the term "Christian" 
occurs but three times, this, and allied 
terms, occur many times. 

The terms "sanctify," "sanctified," 
"sanctification," "saint," "sanctuary," are 
of kindred meaning. "Sanctify" describes 
the action; "sanctified," the completed 
act, or the result; "saint," the person; 
"sanctuary," the place; "sanctification," 
the condition or state. 

To sanctify means to set apart, to 
separate, with especial reference to God 
and his service. Moses sanctified Aaron 
that he might minister unto God in the 
priest's office; set him apart to that 
special work. He sanctified Aaron's 

58 



SAINTS 



garments also, and his sons and his sons' 
garments. 1 The Tabernacle, and all that 
was therein, were sanctified, set apart to 
one great use, a place for the worship of 
God. It became thus the sanctuary, 2 
while Aaron is called "the saint of 
Jehovah." 8 

In the New Testament the use of 
the term "saint" is found mostly in the 
writings of Paul and John, although 
Luke uses it in Acts, and it is used in 
the Epistle of Jude and the Epistle to 
the Hebrews. Paul addresses many of 
his Epistles to "the saints." They are 
at Rome and Corinth and Ephesus and 
Philippi and Colossae. And they are in 
his mind as he writes to the church in 
Thessalonica, and to his son Timothy. 
John's use of the word is found entirely 
in the Apocalypse. The kindred terms, 
as applied to persons and things, are 
used by almost all of the New Testa- 
ment writers. The underlying thought 
is thus evidently an inseparable part of 
Christian teaching. 

'Lev. 8:30. "Lev. 8:10; Ex. 25:8, 9. 8 Ps. 106:16. 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

The name "saint" has the misfortune 
either to be unused, or misused, in 
modern religious practice. Most Chris- 
tians do not use it at all in the New 
Testament sense. It is not a common 
designation of modern followers of 
Christ. 

There are two uses of the term, in 
modern practice, which are unscriptural : 

1. The ritualistic use. In this use of 
the term, a saint is one who has been 
canonized by the Church. By some fiat, 
or ceremony, perhaps long after the 
person has died, he is raised to saint- 
hood, decreed worthy of reverence, even 
of worship. So, we have a list, or "cal- 
endar," of "saints." They have been 
selected from the great mass of believers, 
not always for their singular purity or 
nobility, it must be said; sometimes, be- 
cause of some exploit which worked to 
the advantage of the Church, though 
questionable enough in itself; sometimes 
for other reasons not more worthy. One 
here, another there, over the earth, and 
across the centuries; a considerable host 



SAINTS 



in themselves, but a mere handful as 
compared with the whole multitude of 
those whom Christ has called. And, to 
do these favored ones honor, we have 
"saints' days," and feast-days, named for 
them. And churches and schools and 
monasteries and hospitals are given their 
names, and used as monuments to their 
memory. 

2. The denominational use. A new 
movement starts in religious thought. 
The adherents of it wish to distinguish 
themselves from other Christians. They 
call themselves "saints," either with, or 
without, a qualifying phrase appended. 
The name thus becomes a distinctive 
name, a sectarian badge, a sort of fence 
delimiting the scope of the movement. 

Neither of these is the sense in which 
the term is used in the word of God. 
Both of them are mischievous departures, 
which pervert this most beautiful and 
significant word, and which, by their 
reactions, drive the multitude of Chris- 
tians from the comforting and edifying 
use of it which the Holy Spirit teaches. 

61 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

The New Testament significance of 
the term is apparent. There is deep and 
splendid meaning in it. 

Separation. 1. Separation from the 
world. The Christian is a "called out" 
man. His case is illustrated in Israel 
coming out of Egypt. It was a severe 
wrench that broke Israel loose from the 
land of his bondage. But he came out. 
He was separated from Egypt. Sepa- 
rated by the blood on the door, shutting 
Egypt out from him, shutting him in 
with God; by the going "out," under 
Moses* lead; by the rolling sea when it 
had returned to its strength. The whole 
process of deliverance, from the first 
message of Moses to the nation of slaves, 
on to the moment when the song of 
triumph rose from the lips of a free 
people, was a sanctification, a separation, 
of Israel. 

So the Christian has heard the call 
of Christ. It may be hard for him to 
let go of the world. But Christ lays 
hold on him with the power of heaven 
and breaks him loose. He turns away 

62 



1SAINTS 



from his old life, under the lead of 
Christ. He breaks his relations with it. 
He goes out from it. He passes to the 
shores of freedom in Christ. He is still 
in the world, but not of it. He has 
come into the place of separation. He 
dwells apart, 

Constant emphasis is laid upon this 
separation of the Christian from the 
world, in the New Testament. It is 
everywhere assumed that his break with 
the world is complete and irrevocable. 
He must not think of going back — can 
not, indeed, even for a moment, without 
peril. He must not think of bringing 
forward the old life into the new. The 
divorce must be complete and final. The 
old man must be put off with his doings. 1 
There must be no conforming to this 
age; no fashioning one's self after the 
former lusts. 2 The works of darkness 
must be cast off. 3 There must be no 
provision made for the flesh to fulfill the 
lusts thereof/ The Christian is dead to 



x Col. 3:9. »Rom. 12:2; 1 Pet. 1:14. • Rom. 13:12. 
*Rom. 13: 14. 

5 63 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

sin, dead to the old life. 1 He is crucified 
unto the world, and the world is crucified 
unto him. 2 

It is a vast change. But it is a real 
one. It is as though the world, once 
everything to him, had become nothing. 
For him, "old things are passed away." 3 

So his separation is, first of all, a 
separation from the world. But it is 
more than this. It is (2) separation to 
Christ. It involves not only divorce, but 
union. Those who hear the call of 
Christ, and come out from the world, 
"turn to the Lord." 4 It is not simply a 
change of location that takes place in 
sanctification. The "saint" has changed 
masters. He has entered into a new 
relationship, a new fellowship. 

This, also, is emphasized in the act 
of turning. When Israel went down into 
the sea on the way from Egypt, it was 
a transition. Israel was "baptized unto 
Moses, in the cloud and in the sea." 5 
Thenceforth, Moses was their lawgiver, 



iRom. 6:2. • Gal. 6:14. 8 2 Cor. 5:17. *1 Thess. 1:9, 
10. B 1 Cor. 10: 1, 2. 

64 



SAINTS 



leader, ruler. He stood to them as 
Jehovah. The baptism in the sea com- 
mitted them to him irrevocably. They 
could not go back into Egypt. They 
were separated unto Moses, under God. 

A like significant transition comes to 
men in turning from the world to Christ. 
As the Israelites were baptized unto 
Moses, so the Christian is said to be 
baptized into Christ. 1 In Christian bap- 
tism there is a renunciation of the world, 
and a commitment of the life to Christ. 2 
No longer is life to be self-centered or 
self-determined. Henceforth Christ is 
King and Counselor, and life is to be 
determined by him. 

And right gloriously is it determined 
by him. 

First of all, he gives us an adequate 
motive power. The Holy Spirit is the 
gift of Christ to the Christian. The 
whole process of breaking away from 
the world, of coming into Christ, and of 
being endowed with this motive power 
for the new life, is concisely stated in the 

iRom. 6:3. « Col. 2: 11-13. 
65 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

first gospel sermon, where we would 
expect to find it: "Repent ye, and be 
baptized every one of you in the name of 
Jesus Christ unto the remission of your 
sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the 
Holy Spirit." 1 That gift guarantees to 
the Christian a sufficient power for the 
high task to which he has been called. 

The Holy Spirit is, first of all, the 
safeguard against the encroaches of the 
old nature. The law of the Spirit of life 
in Christ Jesus makes us free from the 
law of sin and death. 2 Our life is. newly 
placed. While still in the body, we are 
not in the "flesh," but in the Spirit, if so 
be that the Spirit of God dwells in us. 8 
It is a familiar thought: Christ in us — 
we in Christ; the Holy Spirit in us — we 
in the Holy Spirit. That ensures the 
victory over the old life. The flesh can 
not come back while we live in that 
union. "Walk by the Spirit, and ye 
shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." 4 
The victory is complete. 

But the Spirit is more than the 

1 Acts 2:38. * Rom. 8:2. » Rom. 8:9. * Gal. 5:16. 



SAINTS 



barrier against the old life. He is also 
the fountain of the new. He guards 
us; but he also enables us. Through 
him life is transformed and the impos- 
sible becomes the real. How varied, 
and how suggestive, the figures by which 
the Spirit's ministry is set forth. He is 
a tree, rooting in our hearts, sending 
forth his branches, bearing fruit. And 
such fruit! "Love, joy, peace, longsufler- 
ing, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 
meekness, self-control ;" things against 
which "there is no law." 1 He is a Guide, 
and, pilgrims that we are in an un- 
friendly world, we "walk after the 
Spirit," and are safe. 2 He is an Inter- 
cessor. And when we know not how to 
pray as we ought, "the Spirit himself 
maketh intercession for us with groan- 
ings which cannot be uttered/' 3 He is 
a Witness, assuring us of our standing 
with God, and keeping before our vision 
the inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled 
and unfading, which wins us from the 
corrupt and perishing baubles of the 

*Gal. 5:22. 9 Rom. 8:4-11. 8 Rom. 8:26. 
67 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

world. 1 He is the Sanctifier, making 
good what he has already begun. 2 He 
is the Strengthener, enabling us to take 
deep root, and to "be strong to apprehend 
with all the saints what is the breadth, 
and length, and height, and depth, and 
to know the love of Christ which passeth 
knowledge, that we may be filled unto 
all the fulness of God." 8 

With this motive power, the "saint" 
is expected to make progress in the new 
life. The obligation for this growth into 
the new is no less emphasized in the 
New Testament than the divorce from 
the old. The Christian is to put on the 
Lord Jesus Christ.* He is to be trans- 
formed by the renewing of his mind. 5 
He is to put on the armor of light. 6 He 
is to walk in the Spirit. 7 He is to put 
on the new man, that after God hath 
been created in righteousness and holi- 
ness of truth. 8 He is to put on the whole 
armor of God, that he may be able to 
stand. 8 He is to add all diligence, and 

iRom. 8:16, 17. »2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2. » Eph. 3: 
16-19. *Rom. 13:14. 8 Rom. 12:2. 8 Rom. 13:12. 'Gal. 5: 
16. 8 Eph. 4:24. • Eph. 6:11-17. 
> 68 



SAINTS 



supply virtue and knowledge and self- 
control and patience and godliness and 
brotherly kindness and love, until these 
things abound in his life, and make him 
not idle or unfruitful unto the knowledge 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, making his 
calling and election sure and his fall 
from the new way impossible, and ensur- 
ing him an abundant entrance into the 
eternal Kingdom of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ. 1 

Such is the New Testament saint. 
Such are all true Christians. The New 
Testament makes no distinction. It 
knows no "calendar" of saints, selecting 
one here and another there, and exclud- 
ing the great mass of believers. It knows 
no sect of "saints," shut off from other 
believers by peculiar doctrines and prac- 
tices. Those who are Christians are 
saints — all of them. The one term is 
coextensive with the other. They all 
have been separated from the world. 
They all have been set apart to Christ. 
They all have received the Holy Spirit. 

*2 Pet. 1:5-11. 

69 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

Sainthood is the normal status of the 
Christian. The name, or title, "saint" 
involves an experience which is common 
to all, and signifies a state into which 
all have come. 

Some important considerations de- 
serve mention in connection with the 
New Testament signification of this 
name. 

1. Saint-making is a divine preroga- 
tive. No man can make a saint. No 
conclave of men can make a saint, no 
matter by what imposing name they may 
call themselves. All that any man can 
do toward making saints is, as did Peter 
and John and Paul, to herald God's 
message to men to come out from the 
world and to come to Christ. The power 
that breaks men loose, that pries them 
out of the old life, that starts them along 
the way out from the world, that sepa- 
rates them from their sins and joins them 
to Christ, is divine power. We may 
call it the power of the Holy Spirit who 
reveals God; or the power of the word 
of God which the Spirit reveals — the 

70 



SAINTS 



gospel, which Paul calls "the power of 
God unto salvation" to all who believe; 1 
it is all the same. It is not the power of 
man, but the power of God, which sepa- 
rates men — makes them saints. 

Thus it is everywhere set forth in 
the Word. Jesus prays that his Father 
may sanctify his disciples in the truth. 2 
Paul says that he was appointed a min- 
ister of Jesus Christ unto the nations, 
ministering the gospel of God, that the 
offering up of the Gentiles might be 
made acceptable, being sanctified by the 
Holy Spirit. 8 He says to the Corinthians 
that they were washed, sanctified, justi- 
fied in the name of Jesus Christ and in 
the Spirit of our God.* He says of the 
Thessalonian Christians that God chose 
them from the beginning in sanctification 
of the Spirit and belief of the truth/ 
Peter calls the Christians to whom he 
writes "elect . . . according to the fore- 
knowledge of God the Father, in sancti- 
fication of the Spirit, unto obedience and 



'Rom. 1:16. "John 17:17. 8 Rom. 15:16. «1 Cor. 6: 
11. *2 Thess. 2: 13. 

71 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." 
Paul prays for the Thessalonians, that 
God may sanctify them wholly; that 
spirit, soul and body may be preserved 
entire, without blame, at the presence of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 He says of the* 
Corinthians that they are sanctified in 
Christ Jesus, called to be saints. 8 He 
tells the Ephesians that Christ loved the 
Church and gave himself up for it, that 
he might sanctify it, having cleansed 
it by the washing of water by the Word, 
that he might present it to himself a 
glorious Church, not having spot or 
wrinkle or any such thing; but that it 
might be holy and without blemish/ The 
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says 
that Christ, that he might sanctify the 
people through his own blood, suffered 
without the gate; and that Christ who 
sanctifieth and his people who are sanc- 
tified are all of one, for which cause he 
is not ashamed to call them brethren. 6 
Thus, everywhere, we are reminded 



M Pet. 1:1, 2. *1 Thess. 5:23. »1 Cor. 1:1. * Eph. 
5:25-27. ° Heb. 2:11; 13:12. 

72 



SAINTS 



that sainthood is a divine gift, status 
accomplished by God for man, when man 
hears the call and turns from the world 
to Christ. He who has not been made a 
saint thus can not be made a saint by 
fiat of man. He who has been made a 
saint thus is a saint despite what men 
may say to the contrary. The preten- 
sions of men that they can determine 
who shall be saints are empty boasts, and 
their processes are crude impostures, by 
whomsoever put forth. 

2. Saints can be made out of very 
common stuff. It is not necessary for a 
man to have fought a battle, or builded 
a cathedral, or gone on a pilgrimage, to 
become a saint. It is not even necessary 
for him to be rich or learned or powerful. 
Paul wrote to "them that are sanctified, 
called to be saints," at Corinth. He says 
of them that not many wise after the 
flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, 
were called ; but that the foolish and 
weak and base and despised things were 
chosen. They had not even been good. 
Some of them had been unspeakably bad. 

73 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

We speak with bated breath the terms by 
which he describes their past lives. But 
he says: "Ye were washed, ye were 
sanctified, ye were justified, in the name 
of Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our 
God" 1 

What is necessary to sainthood is 
first of all a broken spirit and a contrite 
heart; a feeling of our need; a recogni- 
tion of our lost condition; and a belief 
in Jesus Christ as Redeemer. Any man 
can be made a saint who will give up the 
world and turn to the Lord. 

1 1 Cor. 6: 9-11. 



74 



V 
CHILDREN 

"Now are we children of God" — John. 

THE name "children" brings the Chris- 
tian relationship down to where we 
all live. We have, all of us, been some- 
body's children. Many of us have chil- 
dren of our own. All of us have oppor- 
tunities of observing the close ties and 
warm affection which bind children to 
parents, and parents to children. God 
may have seemed distant to us. But 
when we come to know ourselves as his 
children, and can look up and call him 
"our Father," the distance is bridged, 
the strangeness is gone, and we feel at 
home with him. 

What a difference that makes in life! 
We all know how good the home feeling 
is. We go into other people's houses 
and enjoy our visit. Our friends make 

76 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

it pleasant for us, and we are sure of 
their good will and esteem. But ;t is not 
home. We come back where father and 
mother are, and we have a feeling we 
get nowhere else. We know they love 
us. We know we are welcome to re- 
main. Here we rest. Our hearts are 
content. 

There are several blessed things sug- 
gested by this name, as applied to Christ's 
followers : 

I. Sonship with God is a Fact. 
We are children of God. It is a reality. 
New Testament writers are addressing 
Christians. They are disciples of Jesus. 
They are friends of Jesus. They are 
saints, separated entirely to him. But 
they are more than that. Paul says: 
"The Spirit himself beareth witness with 
our spirit, that we are children of God." 3 
John says: "Now are we the children of 
God, and it is not yet made manifest 
what we shall be." 2 These people have 
come into the closest, most tender, most 
vital relationship to God. He is their 



l Rom. 8: 16. »1 John 3:2. 
76 



CHILDREN 



Father. They are his sons and daughters. 
They belong to his family. 

The fact of importance here is this, 
that this is a possible relation for men, 
possible for all men who are willing to 
enter it. What a marvel is here! That 
the great God is willing to take any man 
to be his son; to make the poorest a 
member of his family, and his heir; to 
give to the vilest and the most hopeless, 
a home with him. 

II. Sonship with God is a Matter 
of Evidence. The Spirit himself beareth 
witness with our spirit. Here is the best 
evidence possible. Under the law, a thing 
attested by two or three witnesses was 
established. Here are two witnesses. 
They are both, competent, and reliable. 
Their testimony can not be impeached. 
They bear joint testimony to the estab- 
lishment of one thing — that we are chil- 
dren of God. 

This is the only kind of witness 
possible in this case. There are just two 
principal parties to this relationship 
God and the individual ; Father and child. 

77 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

There are only two spirits that can speak 
here. "The things of God none knoweth 
save the Spirit of God." So the Spirit 
of God must bear witness on God's part, 
or it can never be known whether he has 
received us as his children or not. 

But "who among men knoweth the 
things of a man, save the spirit of the 
man which is in him"? 1 No one but 
yourself knows whether you have given 
yourself to God or not. Becoming a 
child of God is not alone a matter of 
outward form, as joining a lodge, or 
enlisting in an army, which can be 
attested by others who may have wit- 
nessed our obedience to the form pre- 
scribed. This is a matter of the heart — 
of the spirit; and whatever outward 
form there may be connected with it is 
but an expression of the deep and vital 
change within. If it is not that, it is 
worthless. A mere outward form can 
affect nothing here. Now, your spirit 
alone knows whether you have given 
yourself to God. It must be a witness to 



1 Cor. 2: 11. 

78 



CHILDREN 

the fact. The relationship must be estab- 
lished by the joint testimony; can be 
established in no other way. 

But it can be established in this way. 
When God's Spirit bears witness with 
our spirit, the thing is assured. The 
world may question it. The Devil may 
deny it. It stands incontrovertible. 

But how is this witness of God's 
Spirit with our spirit borne? 

The simplest way to bear witness, and 
the surest, is in words. There may be 
other ways. But this is one way, and a 
way by which men may be amply assured. 
The Spirit of God is a speaking Spirit. 
And he speaks on this matter of sonship 
with God. 

First of all, the Spirit assures us that 
sonship is possible. He says that He 
who was with God, and who was God, 
came down to earth. "He was in the 
world, and the world was made by him, 
and the world knew him not. He came 
unto his own, and his own received him 
not." 

It. was a cold welcome. But he was 
e 79 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

not repulsed. In spite of it all, he gave 
men "the right to become children of 
God." 1 

So much is clear; the right to become 
children of God is assured. 

But just in this connection the Spirit 
reveals a great condition of sonship. "As 
many as received him. , ' It was to them 
he gave the right. And how did they 
receive him? "Even to them that believe 
on his name." 

Here is where the joint testimony 
becomes possible. The Spirit of God is 
bearing witness on this matter of son- 
ship. It is, after all, a voluntary matter 
on man's part. "Receiving" and "believ- 
ing" are voluntary acts. It could not be 
otherwise. God could not make an 
unwilling man a son. 

What do our spirits witness here? 
Have we received Christ? Have we 
believed on his name? Receiving Christ 
is not something that can be done for us. 
It is a personal act. Believing on Christ 
is not something we can do without being 

1 John 1: 10-12. 



CHILDREN 



conscious of it. Our spirit knows if we 
have done this. Does our spirit bear 
witness of it? Does the witness of our 
spirit agree with the witness of the Spirit 
of God? 

But the Spirit of God goes further. 
He bears witness that this becoming 
children of God is by a birth, a birth from 
above. "Except one be born anew, he 
cannot see the kingdom of God. Ye 
must be born anew." 1 

Why should it not be so? Is there 
any other way to become children except 
by being born? 

"Born from above" involves the 
thought of God as our Father. So the 
Spirit says of those who receive Jesus, 
and are thus given the right to become 
children of God, that they are "begotten, 
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God." 2 

The great agent in this new birth is 
the Spirit of God. To be born anew is 
to be born of water and the Spirit. 8 

In every birth, there is first the 



ijohn 3:3-7. *John 1:13. « John 3:5. 
81 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

impartation of life. In the new birth, 
the life of God is imparted. How 
could we become God's children other- 
wise? 

This life of God is brought to men 
by the Spirit of God in the Word. Jesus 
says the Word is the seed. 1 The Spirit 
says we are begotten again, "not of cor- 
ruptible seed, but of incorruptible, 
through the word of God which liveth 
and abideth." 2 And again: "Of his own 
will he brought us forth by the word of 
truth." 8 And again: "In Jesus Christ 
I begat you through the gospel." 

A seed is a channel through whictf 
life comes over from one time, or place, 
to another. The word of God is the 
channel through which the life of God 
comes over to men. Hence the spiritual 
status of men depends on what they do 
with the Word. If they allow the Devil 
to take it away out of their hearts, there 
is no fruit. If they deny it depth of 
soil, it withers. If they allow the pleas- 
ures of life and the deceit fulness of 



Luke 8:11. »1 Pet. 1:23. • Jas. 1:18. M Cor. 4:15. 
82 



CHILDREN 



riches to choke it, it brings no fruit to 
perfection. If they receive it into good 
and honest hearts, it multiplies itself, 
and life is redeemed. The parable of 
the sower enforces this thought — that in 
the word which the Spirit of God speaks, 
God's life comes to us. If we receive 
the Word, we receive the life and are 
begotten again; we are on the way to 
sonship; we have received the right to 
become children of God. 1 

This fact seems all the more wonder- 
ful, but also all the more possible, when 
we realize what the Word is. The Spirit 
helps us here. He tells us that the Word 
was in the beginning; that the Word was 
with God; that the Word was God. 2 We 
can not separate the Word from God, 
nor God from the Word, in our thought. 
All that the Word does, God does. All 
that God does, he does by the Word, 
the creative energy that made the worlds 
takes shape in the Word. This Word, 
that "liveth and abideth," is the agency 
of God in imparting his life to men. We 

!Matt. 13:1-9, 18-23. » John 1:1. 
83 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

may surely look for great effects from 
such a cause. 

The matter grows in its sublimity as 
the Spirit goes on to tell us that the 
Word became flesh and dwelt among us. 1 
The Word is embodied in Jesus. Jesus 
is the Word. They who receive Jesus, 
who believe on his name, receive the 
Word. Receiving the Word, they receive 
God. God's life is in them. They have 
the right to become his children. 

What saith our spirit to all this? 
Have we received the Word into good 
and honest hearts? Or are we conscious 
that when God has spoken we have shut 
our ears, and refused to hear? If we 
have done the latter, let us not claim to 
be children of God. Our spirit must 
agree with the witness of God's Spirit, 
or our sonship can not be established. 

But there is more in birth than the 
impartation of life. There is also the 
transition of life. Life must come forth. 

In becoming children of God there 
is an act of transition, where the new 



1 John 1 : 14. 

84 



CHILDREN 



life becomes manifest and the child comes 
into the family. That is what is signified 
by the water, in the new birth. 

Christ has commanded baptism to the 
believer. He says: "He that believeth 
and is baptized shall be saved." 1 He has 
ordained baptism as a transitional act. 
It is the point where the new life mani- 
fests itself; where he who is endowed 
with the life of God comes into the 
family. Baptism is nothing in itself. It 
could mean nothing to an individual who 
had not been begotten by the life of God. 
It is of significance only to the individual 
who has received Christ by faith. But 
to such an one, it is significant. It is his 
transition into the privileges and activi- 
ties of the family of God, where the new 
life can develop in the likeness of Him 
who gave it. 

So the Spirit of God witnesses that 
baptism is a veritable birth out of 
water: "Having been buried with him in 
baptism, wherein ye were also raised with 
him." 2 Also, that it brings us into the 

1 Mark 16: 16. * Col. 2: 12. 
85 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

new relation for which faith in Jesus 
Christ has fitted us. "For ye are all 
sons of God, through faith, in Christ 
Jesus. For as many of you as were bap- 
tized into Christ, did put on Christ." 1 

Here, again, our spirit may bear wit- 
ness to our experience. Baptism is a 
conscious act, a personal act. It is not 
something that one can do for another, 
or have done for another. It is a com- 
mand to be obeyed. It involves a con- 
scious act of the will. 

What does our spirit testify? Have 
we obeyed Jesus Christ in this ordinance? 

It will not do for us to say we do not 
think it necessary. The Spirit of God is 
bearing witness. He can not bear witness 
with our spirit to the fact of our son- 
ship, if our spirit can not witness to our 
obedience. Our reception of Jesus Christ 
the Word, by faith, is but preparatory to 
our transition into him. If we have been 
begotten, we must use our right to be 
born. If Christ, who is the life, is in us 
by faith, we must be in him by obedience, 

1 Gal. 3 : 26, 27. 



CHILDREN 



It is not enough for us to have received 
life. We must come forth. 

III. Sonship with God Brings Mo- 
mentous Results. 1. A new nature. 
Born anew. So, the Spirit witnesses: 
"If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a 
new creature; the old things are passed 
away; behold, they are become new. But 
all things are of God, who reconciled us 
to himself through Christ." 

Here is a good test for us. It may 
be that our reception of Christ has not 
been as hearty as it should have been; 
that even our "obedience" to Christ has 
not been an entire surrender of ourselves 
to him. Let us apply this test. What 
does our spirit say? Have the "old 
things" passed away? The old love of 
the world and its follies; the old temper; 
the old lusts; the old habits? We must 
not wear our old clothes in the new home, 
nor presume to keep up our old associa- 
tions in the new family relationship. 

Has life become new with us? God's 
life in us ought to burgeon out in bloom 

*2 Cor. 5: 17, 18. 

87 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

and fruit, transforming us completely. 
Yea, it will do so, if we have received it 
heartily and yield ourselves to it entirely. 

There are certain ways by which we 
may satisfy ourselves on this point. The 
Spirit says: "Blessed are the peace- 
makers: for they shall be called sons of 
God." 1 Are we peacemakers ? Or strife- 
makers? The Spirit says: "We know 
that we have passed from death unto life 
because we love the brethren. He that 
loveth not abideth in death." 2 What does 
our spirit say here? Let us put our- 
selves to the test. 

2. Heirship. "If children, then heirs; 
heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ: 
if so be that we suffer with him, that we 
may be also glorified with him." 8 No 
language can describe all that this 
means. 

But, first of all, this is good for the 
present time. We miss much if we put 
this entirely in the future. An heir has 
a present inheritance. The child has his 
father's presence, his companionship, his 

iMatt. 5:9. »1 John 3:14. 8 Rom. 8:17. 



CHILDREN 



counsel, his protection, his bounty, his 
home. If we are God's children, we 
have God now. God's truth, God's favor, 
God's power, God's wondrous riches of 
life, God's home, are ours to enjoy in the 
present. The Psalmist says: "Thou pre- 
parest a table before me in the presence 
of mine enemies; thou anointest my head 
with oil; my cup runneth over." Present 
blessing! And he is sure it will con- 
tinue. "Surely goodness and lovingkind- 
ness shall follow me all the days of my 
life, and I shall dwell in the house of the 
Lord for ever." 1 Why should we live a 
lean, impoverished, lonely life, when the 
great God is our Father, and we can be 
at home with him? 

But, secondly, it ensures the future. 
There can be no fear, no misgiving, to the 
child of God who walks by faith. For 
"we are begotten again unto a living 
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead, unto an inheritance incor- 
ruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth 
not away," which is "reserved in heaven 

1 Ps. 23 : S, 6. 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

for those who by the power of God are 
guarded through faith unto a salvation 
ready to be revealed in the last time," 1 
That is the blessed witness of the Spirit 
of God. To all the faithful heirs of God 
it makes the future secure. 



1 Pet. 1 : 3-5. 



90 



VI 
BRETHREN 

"And all ye are brethren." — Jesus. 
"Loving as brethren." — Peter. 

THE name "brethren" is used with 
notable frequency by New Testament 
writers. It is applied to the followers of 
Jesus in thirty instances in the Book of 
Acts. Paul uses it copiously. It appears 
in nearly all his Epistles, in some of them 
with great frequency. James and Peter 
and John, and the writer of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, all use it with more or 
less freedom. It is one of the most 
largely used names of Christ's people. 

The use of this name emphasizes the 
democracy of the Christian estate. It is 
a reminder of at least two things of great 
significance : 

I. The Equality of Christians. 
Jesus says: "Be not ye called Rabbi: for 
one is your teacher, and all ye are 

91 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

brethren. And call no man your father 
on the earth : for one is your Father, even 
he who is in heaven. Neither be ye 
called masters: for one is your master, 
even the Christ. But he that is greatest 
among you shall be your servant." 1 

Christians are sons of God. Involved 
in sonship is brotherhood. There is one 
God, and he is our Father. There is one 
family, and all God's children are in that 
family. All are equal in their relation- 
ship to the Father, and in their status 
as members of his family. 

This is the meaning of those prohibi- 
tions: "Be not called Rabbi, masters," 
etc. ; "Call no man your father on earth." 
These restrictions relate, of course, to 
spiritual things. Here equality is to 
prevail. 

The Christian is on a new plane in 
this regard. Under the Jewish dispen- 
sation there were ranks and orders and 
classes: priests, Levites, and the people. 
Out in the world, men strive after 
dominion, after honor and glory from 



*Matt. 23:8-11. 

92 



BRETHREN 



their fellow-men; and there are classes 
and ranks and offices, which separate 
men, and distinguish them, and maintain 
inequalities among them. Here it is not 
to be so. Before God, and in relation 
to God's favor and blessing, one is not 
greater than another. And in the Chris- 
tian relationship one is not to be, or to 
aspire to be, greater than another save, 
it may be, in service. 

Christians have one Teacher. They 
may have many "teachers." But they 
have one Teacher; not a man — not one 
of themselves, to be honored and revered 
above his brethren, but Christ. And they 
are all alike disciples of Christ — in his 
school. They have one Father; not a 
man, to be feared and obeyed and 
pleased, thus setting him off from the 
mass of his brethren as being holier or 
more mighty than they. But, God, the 
Father in heaven, the Father of the Lord 
Jesus Christ and of all his followers, 
whose life has been given us in the new 
birth, to whose family we all belong. 

They have one Master; not any man 

93 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

who has been set over them to command 
or to punish. But Christ, the Lord, to 
whom God has given all authority in 
heaven and on earth, and to whom all 
alike are responsible. So, the equality of 
the children in the family is guarded and 
maintained. 

One can not but note the contrast 
between this ideal of Jesus for his people, 
and that which is embodied in the sys- 
tems which men invent and perpetuate. 
The "religions" of the world are largely 
priestly religions. This is true of what 
we term the pagan faiths. They separate 
men into classes, priestly and lay. The 
priestly classes are ranked in hierarchies 
with ascending scales of dignity. They 
are not democracies — but imperialisms. 

There are systems claiming 'the Chris- 
tian name which notoriously embody this 
principle. Even the newer cults, which 
in this day are springing up so rapidly, 
almost all propose some earthly head — 
some supposed superior person to whom 
all others are to pay deference; with 
more or less of the hierarchical in the 

94 



BRETHREN 



relations of the members to each other, 
and to the head. There grows out of 
this, distinctions among the people, and 
inequalities of privilege and power. 

How foreign all this is to the spirit 
and ideal of Jesus, is at once apparent. 
The Christian community is a family. 
There are no slaves here, no masters, no 
favorites. There is no one who has a 
right to lord it over others. All are 
alike under the Father's love and care. 
All are under the authority of the Elder 
Brother. All have equal access to the 
Father, through Jesus Christ, who is the 
"Apostle and High Priest of our con- 
fession." All are equally priests of 
God, under him. 2 No man has any 
power or right to stand between his 
brother and the throne, either to secure 
him or to deny him any blessing. All 
spiritual privilege and blessing is in the 
power of the Head of the family. Every 
member has, in his own proper person, 
free access to it, through the new and 
living way that has been opened up. 3 

1 Heb. 3:1. 3 1 Pet. 2: 9; Rev. 1: 6. » Heb. 10: 19-23. 
7 95 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

What a clumsy anachronism are all 
priesthoods and priestly systems! What 
a monstrous usurpation, for any man to 
place himself between his brethren in 
Christ and the throne of God, as the chan- 
nel through which the divine favor must 
be sought. What a recurrence to out- 
grown things, and discredited things, for 
any class of men to pose as the indis- 
pensable dispensers of God's blessings. 
What a blindness to the realities of the 
redemption which Christ has wrought, 
for his people to hand over to a preten- 
tious class the high prerogatives and 
priceless privileges which Christ has 
made free to all. "All ye are brethren." 
That is the charter of liberties to the 
Christian community. It is the sentence 
of doom upon every priestly claimant and 
system. 

Nothing is more vital to Christian 
welfare than the preservation of this 
Christian democracy under Christ. The 
hierarchical spirit is intrusive and per- 
sistent. The beautiful simplicity of the 
early Christian relationship was soon lost 



BRETHREN 



in the impertinent encroachments of the 
priestly ambition. All that Jesus forbade 
in that memorable prohibition quoted, 
came into practice among those who still 
professed to be following him. And 
from that day until the present, on a wide 
scale, the name of Christ has been 
called upon systems in which Christians 
have been compelled to call their brethren 
"Rabbi," and "Father/' and "Master," 
and where those who would be greatest 
have had, also, as their ambition, to be 
served rather than to serve. Many and 
notable have been the protests against 
this violation of the Christian compact; 
and worthy have been the successes in 
breaking the impious yoke and coming 
back into the liberty with which Jesus 
Christ has set his people free. But 
it is an instructive fact that within 
every such movement there springs up 
speedily the old lie, that some are to 
be above others in the Christian relation- 
ship. And that peril must be vigilantly 
guarded against, or those who have 
been made freemen in Christ will be 

97 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

again entangled in a yoke of bondage.' 
II. Fraternity. Brotherhood lived! 
It is not easily achieved. The old life is a 
life of rivalry. Sin casts men into cross- 
purposes with one another. The spirit 
of brotherhood is killed. Individualism 
runs riot. "Enmities, strife, jealousies, 
wraths, factions, divisions, parties, envy- 
ings," are among the works of the flesh. 2 
Paul recalled his old life, and its bitter 
antagonisms: "For we also once were 
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving 
divers lusts and pleasing ourselves, living 
in malice and envy, hateful, hating one 
another." 3 

This spirit gets into all phases of life. 
Business becomes a selfish competition — 
an economic war. Politics is an ambi- 
tious rivalry. "Society" is a herd- 
egotism. 

The child of God is in the midst of 
all these tendencies to social disintegra- 
tion. He has been reared in the midst 
of them, has been moulded by them, and 
is inevitably involved in them in many 



1 Gal. 5:1. ■ Gal. 5: 20. 8 Tit. 3: 3. 
98 



BRETHREN 



ways. It is a tremendous task to ignore 
them, to rise above them, to deny them. 
Christians find it hard to be rivals in 
business, and fellows in religion; to be 
antagonists in politics, and fellow-helpers 
in the Kingdom of God; to move in 
different social classes, and meet on terms 
of equality in the Christian circle. The 
competitive instinct dies hard. The class 
spirit is intrusive. The old egotism is 
constantly imperiling the new brother- 
hood. 

But brotherhood must be lived. "All 
ye are brethren." How constantly and 
pointedly the Holy Spirit keeps the obli- 
gations of brotherhood before us. How 
direct and withering his blows at the 
selfish spirit. How illuminating and 
inspiring his directions and exhortations 
to altruism. 

The motive and the process of this 
brotherly life are alike set forth. "In 
love of the brethren be tenderly affec- 
tioned one to another; in honor prefer- 
ring one another." 1 What an entire 



1 Rom. 12: 10. 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

reversal of the old procedure! And this 
love is not to be cold and apathetic, a 
mere conventionalism. It is to be a flame 
in which all unbrotherliness will be 
burned out and all brotherly ministry 
promoted. "Above all things being fer- 
vent in your love among yourselves: for 
love covereth a multitude of sins; using 
hospitality one to another without mur- 
muring; according as each hath received 
a gift, ministering it among yourselves 
as good stewards of the manifold grace 
of God." 1 

The selfish and uncharitable judg- 
ments by which we rank our fellow-men 
in relation to ourselves, are all smitten 
by this new outlook. They are our 
equals, and we are all under God. "Why 
dost thou judge thy brother? Or thou 
again, why dost thou set at nought thy 
brother? For we shall all stand before 
the judgment-seat of God." Love allows 
only one judgment about our brother — ■ 
this: "that no man put a stumblingblock 
in his brother's way, or an occasion of 



»1 Pet. 4:8-10. "Rom. 14:10. 
100 



BRETHREN 

falling." 1 And, if perchance our brother 
fall, love sets before us one duty: "Ye 
who are spiritual restore such an one in 
the spirit of gentleness; looking to thy- 
self lest thou also be tempted." The 
brother's heavy load is our load also, 
because he is our brother. There is only 
one thing for us to do about it : "Bear ye 
one another's burdens, and so fulfil the 
law of Christ." 2 

As has been said, this is not easy. 
We can scarcely say that, even as Chris- 
tians, it "comes natural" to us. It is a 
life that must be cultivated. The "new 
man" is to be "put on." And it takes a 
good deal of "putting on," to get the life 
fitted to us so that we wear it naturally 
and easily. But it must be persisted in. 
There is no other way to realize brother- 
hood. And brotherhood must be realized. 
"Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy 
and beloved, a heart of compassion, kind- 
ness, lowliness, longsurTering ; forbearing 
one another, and forgiving each other, if 
any man have a complaint against any; 

1 Rom. 14: 13. "Gal. 6:1, 2. 
101 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

even as the Lord forgave you, so also 
do ye: and above all these things put on 
love, which is the bond of perfectness. 
And let the peace of Christ rule in your 
hearts, to the which also ye were called 
in one body; and be ye thankful." And 
how that spirit of brotherliness goes out 
in mutual ministry to the brethren ; draw- 
ing from the great fountain of spiritual 
refreshment and bearing it to one an- 
other in vessels of service, as God has 
given to each. "Let the word of Christ 
dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teach- 
ing and admonishing one another with 
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, 
singing with grace in your hearts unto 
God." And all this is to be done with 
the thought ever present of the common 
relationship of all, to Christ as Lord, and 
to God as Father, the source of all bless- 
ing. "And whatsoever ye do, in word or 
in deed, do all in the name of the Lord 
Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father 
through him." 1 

This is to be the common family life 

1 Col. 3: 12-17. 

102 



BRETHREN 

of Christians. Not a special class within 
the Christian community, is thus obli- 
a gated. It is the family spirit, and is to 
be cultivated by every member. "Finally, 
be ye all likeminded, compassionate, lov- 
ing as brethren, tenderhearted, humble- 
minded: not rendering evil for evil, or 
reviling for reviling; but contrariwise 
blessing; for hereunto were ye called, 
that ye should inherit a blessing." 1 

What marvels this new spirit effects 
in human society! Had the world ever 
witnessed anything like what transpired 
soon after these new relationships began 
to be announced and established? See 
that "community of goods" which spon- 
taneously took the place of individual 
ownership in the Jerusalem church. 
What did it signify? For one thing, 
this: that Jews of all ranks and classes, 
from priesthood to proletariat, from 
employer and proprietor to day laborer 
and pauper, were fused together in a 
brotherhood of the Spirit, where love, not 
blood, or racial interest, was the bond, 



1 1 Pet. 3:8, 9. 

103 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

and where there was no longer "I," as 
against "thou," but all were one in Him 
whom their hearts had accepted as Lord. 
See that other phenomenon, more won- 
derful still, where Gentiles, out on the 
wide world-field, took thought of needy 
and suffering Jews in the little country 
of Judea, and gave joyfully and liberally 
of their substance to relieve their dis- 
tress. Was there ever more noble giving 
than that described by Paul when he tells 
of the Macedonian Christians? How 
that in much proof of affliction the 
abundance of their joy and their deep 
poverty abounded unto the riches of their 
liberality? They gave according to their 
power, yea and beyond their power. 
They gave of their own accord. They 
besought Paul with much entreaty in 
regard to this offering, that he would 
take it and administer it for them. 1 And 
all this for people whom they had never 
seen, perhaps. Not only so — for people 
of a race that was despised by Gentiles. 
There has been no race hatred sharper, 



*2 Cor. 8: 1-4. 

104 



BRETHREN 

or contempt more withering, in history, 
than that which existed in many instances 
between those two races at that time. 

What is the secret of this? One 
thing: they had given their own selves 
to the Lord, as disciples of Christ and 
children of the Father. And the logical 
sequence of that was that they should 
give themselves unto one another — "to 
us," Paul says, for this service to their 
brethren, "through the will of God." 1 

Here is an unparalleled thing. Jew 
and Gentile, bond and free, rich and poor, 
in one fellowship, loving one another, 
brothers! There was no hate nor scorn 
too strong in the old life. Here there is 
"one spirit"; they love as brethren. 

This fact, accomplished in that early 
day, made possible and pertinent such 
unprecedented announcements as that 
there was no longer Greek and Jew, 
circumcision and uncircumcision, bar- 
barian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but 
that Christ is all, and in all, and all are 
one in him. 2 It made fitting such utter- 



2 Cor. 8: 5. » Col. 3: 11. 
105 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

ances as the thirteenth chapter of First 
Corinthians and the first Epistle of John. 
And this fact, possible in any age, is 
the hope of the world. Hatred and 
injustice, oppression and warfare, race 
prejudice and class pride, will pass away, 
and peace and good will prevail only in 
the degree in which men become children 
of God and come into the spirit of 
brotherhood in Christ. There is no 
peace-pact, save this, that will stand 
against the selfish instincts of men. 



106 



VII 

SERVANTS 

"As servants of Christ, doing the will of God from 
the heart." — Paul. 

THE name "servant," in the New Tes- 
tament, has, in the majority of 
instances, the meaning, "bondservant," 
"slave." 

At first thought, this name might 
suggest a tremendous descent from the 
high significance of the names we have 
been considering. After dwelling in the 
uplands of Christian relationship, where 
the flowers and fruits of high privilege 
with God are abundant and satisfying, 
we recoil from this plunge into the 
shadows, with its reminder of chains, and 
loss of freedom, and soulless drudgery. 

And does not this feeling of resent- 
ment seem strengthened by much New 
Testament teaching? Jesus says: "No 
longer do I call you servants; for the 

107 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

servant knoweth not what his lord doeth : 
but I have called you friends; for all 
things that I have heard from my Father 
I have made known unto you." 1 Indeed, 
he had already said that the very pur- 
pose and effect of discipleship was to 
make men free. 2 The apostle Paul is 
constantly emphasizing the freedom of 
the Christian. It is the very purpose of 
Christ's redemption, and must be sacredly 
guarded and maintained. 8 

How is it, then, that this name is 
repeatedly applied to Christ's followers, 
in the New Testament? Jesus himself 
uses it, in the very conversation in which 
he seems to abolish it, as quoted above/ 
Paul continually calls himself the servant 
— slave — of Christ, and associates others 
with him in that designation. 6 The term 
is used by James and Peter and Jude and 
John. It occurs more frequently in the 
Book of Revelation than in any other 
book of the New Testament, as applied 
to the followers of Christ. It is applied 



^ohn 15:15. "John 8:32. « Gal. 5:1. *John 15:20£. 
8 Rom. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Tit. 1:1. 

108 



SERVANTS 



to men in the present state. But it is 
used also of men in the future state. In 
the Jerusalem that is to come, the ser- 
vants of the Lord will be still serving 
him. 1 

It is apparent that we must seek a 
new significance for this name as applied 
to Christians. 

But, first of all, let not our hearts 
recoil from it. For we are in good com- 
pany here. A host of worthies have gone 
before us who were also "servants." 
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and 
Moses and Joshua and Samuel; Job and 
Elijah and David and Nehemiah; Isaiah 
and all the prophets — they, all, are called 
"servants," in this same sense of bond- 
age, and were glad to confess themselves 
as such. And one greater than they all 
is pointed out by Jehovah as "my servant 
whom I uphold; my chosen in whom my 
soul delighteth." 2 

There is a sense in which the Chris- 
tian is free. Christ is a deliverer. He 
breaks all old chains of bondage, and 

1 Rev. 22:3. " Isa. 42: 1. 

109 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

brings men into the liberty of the children 
of God. 

This freedom is a freedom from sin. 
Sin is a tyrant, and he who commits sin 
is his bondservant. 1 It is a galling and 
shameful slavery. We have little cause 
to be ashamed of any slavery, after hav- 
ing submitted to that. But Christ 
delivers us from that "power of dark- 
ness." 2 We are, through him, "made 
free from sin." Sin no more reigns in 
our mortal body that we should obey the 
lusts thereof; neither must we any longer 
present our members unto sin as instru- 
ments of unrighteousness. 

This is also freedom from the law. 
Sinai in Arabia — "the Jerusalem which 
now is" — is in bondage with her children. 
But the Jerusalem which is above is free, 
which is our mother. 4 The law was a 
yoke that men were not able to bear. 5 
Christ delivers men from it. 6 The whole 
seventh chapter of the Epistle to the 
Romans is a striking exposition of this 



ijohn 8:34. a Col. 1:13. 8 Rom. 6:12, 13, 18. * Gal. 4: 
25,26. 6 Acts 15:10. • Rom. 7:6. 

110 



SERVANTS 



bondage to sin and to the law, and this 
deliverance through Christ. It is epito- 
mized in this pregnant statement: "For 
the law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus made me free from the law of sin 
and of death." 1 

This deliverance is revolutionary. 
Like a prisoner out of the dungeon, the 
soul comes forth. Like an uncaged bird 
it mounts, free from its old detention, 
and joyful in its freedom. 

This is the standpoint from which to 
view the new slavery. The liberated man 
is free. But he belongs to Him who 
freed him. "And ye are not your own; 
for ye were bought with a price." 2 And 
what a price! Not corruptible things, as 
silver and gold. But with precious blood, 
as of a lamb without blemish and with- 
out spot — the blood of Christ. 3 Shall 
He who has given his own life for us 
make no requirement of us? Has He 
redeemed us at such a cost, to lie idle, 
or rove at will? Nay! He has higher 
aims for us than that. Christ gave him- 

iRom. 8:2. *1 Cor. 6:19, 20. «1 Pet. 1:18, 19. 
8 111 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

self for us that he might redeem us from 
all iniquity, and purify unto himself a 
people for his own possession, zealous of 
good works. 1 

Here is the new significance of the 
name "servant." The Christian has 
changed masters. He is now the posses- 
sion of Christ. That fact alone trans- 
figures the name. But when to this is 
added the task his Master sets before 
him, the glory is enhanced. Good works. 
That aligns him with his Master, "who 
went about doing good." 2 That pro- 
claims him as of Him who is good and 
doeth good; 8 "for he that doeth good is 
of God." 4 

No shame is there in this new mean- 
ing of the name. On the contrary, it is 
a title of honor; we may say, of honor 
supreme. 

For, after all, this new slavery is 
real freedom. 

Christ's possession of us means our 
righteousness. The life of righteousness 
in Jesus Christ is the life of liberty. It 

x Tit. 2:14. "Acts 10:38. 'Ps. 119:68. *3 John 11. 
112 



SERVANTS 

is a wonderful paradox that the more 
thorough is our surrender to him, the 
more he makes us masters of ourselves. 
We find the apparent contradiction a 
real harmony, that when we lose our 
lives in him, we save them. 1 We discover 
that, for the first time in our lives, as 
Christ's bondslaves,, we can do as we 
please with perfect impunity; that there 
is no law hindering us with its restric- 
tions or threatening us with its penalties, 
along the road which it is our delight to 
travel. 2 Our life is as the sweep of the 
planets in their orbits, without friction, 
without weariness, propelled, and held in 
leash, by the will of Christ our Master. 
This, too, is the highest glory. It is 
not necessarily a degradation to be used 
by another. It all depends on what we 
are used for. The metal used by the 
electric current, carrying messages of 
weight and purpose, is honored in that 
service. The rails which bear the traffic 
of a continent are not thereby dishonored, 
but given a new dignity. The filthy 

*Matt. 16:25. « Gal. 5:23. 
113 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

rags, made into paper, receiving print, 
made to carry the news hither and 
thither, are thereby immeasurably en- 
nobled. 

It is the supreme glory of human 
lives to be made carriers of God. When 
light shines out of darkness and comes 
into our hearts to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the 
face of Jesus Christ, it is no small honor 
to be the carbon-point to flash it out upon 
mankind. When our souls have been 
refreshed by the river of life, it is a 
high dignity that comes to us, earthen 
vessels that we are, to carry its waters 
to the thirsty. Were we great in our- 
selves, we might obscure the glory of 
God in this ministry to men's needs. But, 
being nothing but slaves of Jesus Christ, 
the exceeding greatness of the power is 
seen to be of God, and we have our high- 
est glory in proclaiming his. The tree 
is nothing, of itself. With its roots, its 
trunk, its branches, it is but a channel 
through which the life forms itself and 
effects its purposes. Its glory is in serv- 

114 



SERVANTS 



ing. Were it to divorce itself from the 
life which dominates it, it would be but 
an unsightly stump. But, filled with the 
life, putting out roots and leaves and 
blossoms, in obedience to the life — living 
only to serve — it is a noble thing, pleas- 
ing and useful and beneficent. 

So, service, for the Christian, is the 
highway to honor and usefulness and 
power. There is no true glory apart 
from it. There is all glory for us here. 

We can begin to understand, thus, 
the reason for the continued use of this 
name. New Testament writers appre- 
ciated what it meant for life to be com- 
pletely dominated by the will of Christ. 
It was something, not to be shunned, but 
to be coveted. The "servant," in this 
high sense, is not inferior to the "dis- 
ciple," the "friend," the "Christian," the 
"saint," the "son," the "brother." Nay! 
He is, yet, all these, his relationship 
under all these names preserved intact. 
Not only so. What these names, one 
and all, signify, receives additional honor 
and crowning glory, in this. Service for 

115 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

Jesus Christ is the climax of privilege 
for his followers. 

This doubtless accounts for that 
vision of service which we are permitted 
to see, in the other world. It is signifi- 
cant that, in the vision of the New Jeru- 
salem, but two of the names we have 
been considering appear — "son" and 
"servant." Of these, the latter receives 
the more prominence. The significance of 
the others has been very largely merged 
in this. The disciple of Jesus has learned 
his lesson and now knows as he is known. 
The friend of Jesus has been joined with 
him in eternal union. The Christian has 
kept the faith, fought the good fight, 
finished his course. The saint is among 
the holy ones about the throne, forever 
freed from the corruption that is in the 
world. The children have come home to 
the Father's house. The brethren find 
their ultimate fellowship in the home 
from which they shall never go out. 

But all are still servants of the King. 
And they are fitted for service as never 
before. In the body, the life of Christ 

116 



SERVANTS 



within us is hampered and restricted by 
the weakness of the flesh. But when 
Christ shall have endowed his servants 
with new bodies, like unto the body of 
his glory, 1 these will be perfect instru- 
ments for his Spirit. And in the service 
to which Christ will put us in that new 
sphere, the full significance of redemp- 
tion will be seen. 



1 Phil. 3 : 20, 21. 



117 



VIII 
CHURCH 

"I will build my church." — Jesus. 

COLLECTIVELY, the followers of 
Christ are designated in the New 
Testament as the church. The word 
occurs first in that memorable conver- 
sation of Jesus with his disciples recorded 
in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew; and 
it is used again by the Master in a later 
conversation. 1 In both these instances, it 
is used in an anticipative way. The 
church was not at this time In existence 
— save in the purpose of Jesus. Which 
fact has a value in determining the mean- 
ing of the church. It is not simply a num- 
ber of disciples of Jesus, attached to him 
in a personal interest. This was already 
true — in the group he had gathered, and 
to whom he made his announcement. 



Matt. 18: 17. 

118 



CHURCH 

The primary meaning of the word is 
"that which is called out." But the 
term, as Jesus uses it, in anticipation of 
his work in the world, and as it is used 
later of the accomplished fact, evidently 
involves more than the mere fact of 
being called forth. It is not simply a 
separation from the world that is in- 
volved, as ore is separated from its native 
bed, or timber from the forest. The 
term involves the assembling and uniting 
of the materials in a definite relationship. 
Jesus says, "I will build it." There is 
the idea of construction, of fitting mate- 
rials together, of creating out of their 
individualities a unity, so that the many 
become one. The church is not to be 
simply a crowd — a mass of detached 
individuals. Neither is it to be a mob, 
brought together and moved by a sudden 
and fitful impulse. There is an orderli- 
ness in this purpose of Jesus, a far- 
sighted, logical and stately process. He 
aims at a permanent result. The church 
is to be a stable thing, founded on a rock, 
indestructible. It is to be an organic 

119 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

thing, with collective intelligence and 
power of initiative and action, capable 
of being addressed and appealed to, and 
of forming decisive judgments. The dis- 
ciples who heard these announcements of 
Jesus were to be in the church when it 
should be formed. They were already 
"called out" to his service, and so were 
materials, ready at hand for the building. 
They were to live in anticipation of being 
built in when the purpose of Christ 
should move into action. 

This is the significance of those won- 
derful promises of Jesus recorded in 
several chapters of the Gospel of John. 
The term "church" does not recur in the 
Gospels. But the thing is in the mind 
of the Master, and the meaning of it, as 
well as the means to it, is made clear to 
the disciples. 

The promise of the Holy Spirit to the 
disciples was the guarantee that the 
church would be built. They were natu- 
rally despondent when Jesus announced 
his departure from them. His presence 
had been the bond that had bound them 
120 



CHURCH 

together. They felt that, with his ab- 
sence, they would fall apart like a rope 
of sand. The Holy Spirit would prevent 
that. He would do more. He would 
unite them in a vital, organic union with 
each other and with Christ. He was to 
be the builder of the church. And he 
would come without fail and abide with- 
out end. "I will pray the Father, and 
he shall give you another Comforter, 
that he may be with you for ever, even 
the Spirit of truth." He was not to 
come to the world. The world could not 
receive him: "for it beholdeth him not, 
neither knoweth him." He comes to a 
prepared people— to a people "called out," 
as the disciples had been by the invita- 
tion of Christ; a people anticipating, 
and desirous of, a growing fellowship 
with God. "Ye know him; for he 
abideth with you and shall be in you." 
He is an expected guest, and enters 
to abide in hearts that are ready for 
him. 

And this coming of the Spirit was 
to be in reality the return of the Master 
121 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

to his disciples. Had he not said, "I will 
build my church" ? The Holy Spirit is 
Christ in spirit — building his church. 
So he says : "I will not leave you orphans : 
I come unto you. Yet a little while, and 
the world beholdeth me no more: but ye 
behold me: because I live, ye shall live 
also." No wonder he had said: "Ye 
know him." Did they not know their 
own Master? And when he returns in 
this way, these people who had already 
been "called out," will be built together 
with him in a conscious unity. "In that 
day ye shall know that I am in my 
Father, and ye in me, and I in you." 1 

We come here to the real significance 
of the church. It is an organism in 
Christ, and in which Christ is; and in 
which there is the consciousness of this 
double relation. Not only so. There is 
the consciousness that this interrelation 
with Christ insures oneness with God. 
I am in the Father — ye in me — I in you. 
The union of the disciple with God 
through Jesus the Master is complete. 



1 John 14: 16-20. 

122 



CHURCH 

The church is a conscious union of men 
with one another, in Christ and God. 

The church therefore represents the 
climax of human privilege and power in 
spiritual things. This was what Jesus 
had in mind when he announced the 
church. 

The next occurrence of the word is 
in the Acts, where it appears frequently. 
Paul uses it continuously. It occurs in 
every one of his Epistles excepting Sec- 
ond Timothy and Titus. Peter and Jude 
are the only New Testament writers 
who do not use it in their Epistles. It is 
used seventeen times in the Apocalypse. 

In all these later instances the church 
is spoken of as an existing fact. What 
Jesus announced, has now come to pass. 
The second chapter of Acts is a meeting- 
place of promise and performance. We 
see in that record the fulfillment of 
Jesus' promise. The coming of the Holy 
Spirit on Pentecost resulted in the church 
as a fact in history. The Spirit came to 
the disciples of Jesus. It was their 
Master, back again in spirit, making 

123 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

them conscious of his presence in them, 
of their union with him, and of their 
oneness with God. All the marvels of 
Pentecost are easy in the light of this. 
There was a new thing in the world, a 
high thing, the highest possible to men 
in the body; and new phenomena and 
accomplishment were to be expected. The 
transformation of the timid, confused 
disciples into courageous and convincing 
proclaimers; the conversion of a multi- 
tude of scoffers and antagonists to a 
cause as yet so despised and so appar- 
ently weak; the wonderful joy and love 
and unity of a great company of people, 
hitherto, perhaps, strangers to one an- 
other ; all this was because the church had 
come — built by Christ in spirit. All his 
own wisdom and all the mighty power of 
God were flowing here through this 
human channel — a river of life to refresh 
the earth. We watch this channel, as it 
expands and carries this tide of heaven 
abroad in the world. We catch glimpses 
of it, in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in 
Samaria, over in Damascus, in Antioch, 

124 



CHURCH 

throughout Asia Minor, over in Mace- 
donia and Greece, as far away as Rome. 
Men of all races, of all classes, are 
"called out," and are builded together 
into a throbbing organism, instinct with 
a common faith and purpose. And we 
realize that Jesus is doing the great work 
which he had announced he would do; he 
is building his church, on a progressive 
and world-embracing scale. 

As we follow this process, we become 
conscious that the church has a twofold 
manifestation. We see it in its local 
aspect — the gathering out, and building 
together, of all who, in any certain com- 
munity, hear the call, and receive the 
word, of Jesus as Lord. So, Jerusalem 
has a "church." 1 But, soon, Antioch also 
has a "church." 3 And, a little later, 
there are "churches" at various points 
on the heathen field, so that Paul and 
Silas ordained elders in "every church." 8 
Such local "churches" multiplied, until 
the world was pretty thoroughly covered 
with them. They differed much, it can 



Acts 5: 11; 8: 1-3. "Acts 13: 1. « Acts 14: 23. 
125 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

not be doubted, in the human elements 
that entered into them ; Jews alone, as in 
Jerusalem and throughout Judea; Jews 
and Gentiles, as in Antioch; Gentiles 
almost wholly, as in the Galatian and 
Grecian churches. In some churches, 
many of the influential people of the 
community, as in Jerusalem, where a 
great company of the priests had become 
obedient to the faith. 1 In others, almost 
wholly the humbler classes, as in Corinth, 
where not many who were wise after the 
flesh, nor mighty, nor noble, were called/ 
These separated and differing groups of 
people would be differently affected by 
the different environment in which they 
found themselves, as well as by their 
various heritage of racial and religious 
characteristics. From the outward as- 
pect, one might think they had not so 
much in common. 

But we must be conscious of another 
aspect of the church. The church is a 
unit. The "churches" are but the church 
in its local manifestations. Underneath 



Acts 6:7. '1 Cor. 1:26. 
126 



CHURCH 

all the variety is unity. There is one 
body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one 
faith, one baptism, one God and Father 
of all, who is over all, through all, in all. 1 
Before this essential unity, all distinc- 
tions of race and class fade away. The 
"called out," of whatever station or 
people, are built into a single structure. 
Through his human ministers, Christ 
brings them together and unites them. 
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, 
teachers, are given: "Unto the building 
up of the body of Christ; till we all attain 
unto the unity of the faith, and of the 
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full- 
grown man, unto the measure of the 
stature of the fulness of Christ." It is 
the purpose of the great Builder that all 
his "called" ones may grow up in all 
things into him, who is the head, even 
Christ; from whom all the body fitly 
framed and knit together through that 
which every joint supplieth, according to 
the working in due measure of each 
several part, maketh the increase of the 



1 Eph. 4: 4-6. 
» 127 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

body unto the building up of itself in 
love. 1 There can be no cleavage here. 
In an organism so thoroughly united in 
Christ, there can be neither Jew nor 
Greek, bond nor free, male nor female. 
All are one in Christ Jesus.' 

We are not surprised, therefore, to 
find the name "church" applied to the 
whole community of believers as though 
they were all really and consciously 
united in one organism. Saul's ravages 
were against the "church," 8 whether 
found in Jerusalem or in Damascus. 
When Saul was converted, "the church," 
throughout all Judea and Galilee and 
Samaria, had peace, being edified; and 
walking in the fear of the Lord and in 
the comfort of the Holy Spirit, was 
multiplied/ Whether having its local 
habitation in Judean towns or Gentile 
capitals; whether its members were un- 
cultured slaves or brainy disputants; 
whether the local assemblies numbered 
thousands, or were but the members of a 
single household— the "church" included 

*Eph. 4:11-16. «Gal. 3:28. 8 Acts 8:1-3. *Acts 9:31. 
128 



CHURCH 

all, in all places, who had come out from 
the world at the call of Christ and had 
submitted themselves unto him in the 
Spirit. All these were built on the one 
foundation, and into the one superstruc- 
ture. All had come into the conscious- 
ness of oneness with Christ, and of unity 
with God through him. The church was 
the body, of which Jesus Christ was the 
head; 1 and in which, while every member 
had his own place and function, there 
could be, in the nature of the case, no 
schism. 

In apostolic usage, the church is vari- 
ously designated. Qualifying phrases, 
such as "of the Gentiles," a "of the 
saints," 1 "of the firstborn," 4 indicate the 
class, or the character, of the people mak- 
ing up the churches spoken of. "Of 
Galatia, 6 Asia, 6 Thessalonica, 7 Ephesus," 8 
etc., and "In Smyrna, Pergamos, Thya- 
tira," etc., 9 are simply place qualifications, 
designating locality for the churches 
mentioned. Aside from these, there are 

^ol. 1:18, 24. "Rom. 16:4. 8 1 Cor. 14:33. * Heb. 
12:23. 5 1 Cor. 16:1; Gal. 1:2. 8 1 Cor. 16:19. 7 1 Thess. 
1: 1. 8 Rev. 2: 1. 9 Rev. 2: 8-18. 
129 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

at least three designations, used and sug 
gested, which demand consideration. 

First — Church. In the great ma- 
jority of instances in which the insti- 
tution is spoken of, this term, either in 
the singular, or in the plural, is used 
without a qualifying phrase. The justi- 
fication for this is evident. The church 
was a new thing in human society. It 
was unique. No organization among 
men, past or present, could be compared 
with it in character. Wherever it was 
manifested it carried its own distinction. 
It marked an obvious and radical cleav- 
age in human society. Over against it 
was the unbelieving world, whether of 
Jew or of Gentile, with all the disabilities 
which unbelief entails. The church itself 
was a faith institution, with all the poten- 
cies of spiritual enrichment which faith 
ensures. The difference was immediately 
apparent. 

The use of the unqualified term 
emphasized this essential distinction. It 
was a reminder to those in the church 
that they were out from the world and 

130 



CHURCH 

that a new life was now possible, and 
obligatory because possible. It was a 
reminder to those yet in the world that 
there was no hope there; that if they 
would be saved from sin they must escape 
out of sin. The name, like the individual 
names of Christ's people, carried a vital 
significance. It was a proclamation of 
spiritual facts of tremendous import. It 
set forth the crowning fact in human 
history — that the power of heaven was 
at work among men, selecting and build- 
ing them into a spiritual temple, the 
dwelling-place on earth of the Most 
High. ' 

Second — Church of Christ. This 
term is not used in the New Testament 
in the singular. The plural form, 
"churches of Christ," occurs once. 1 

The idea, however, pervades the 
whole teaching about the church in the 
New Testament. Jesus says: "I will 
build my church." 2 The idea of author- 
ship and of proprietorship is involved 
here. 



'Rom. 16:16. "Matt. 16:18. 

131 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

The church is the body of Jesus 
Christ. 1 The idea of ownership is abso- 
lute here. As a man's body is his own, 
and not another's, so the church is the 
church of Christ, and not of another. 

A still more significant figure is used. 
Paul said that he had espoused the Cor- 
inthians to one husband, that he might 
present them as a pure virgin to Christ. 2 
He represents the relationship of the 
church to Christ as that of espoused wife 
to husband. Christ loved the church, and 
gave himself up for it; that he might 
sanctify it, having cleansed it by the 
washing of water with the Word, that 
he might present the church to himself 
a glorious church, not having spot or 
wrinkle or any such thing; but that it 
should be holy and without blemish. 3 
Nothing could emphasize more strongly 
than these statements the right of Christ 
to call the church his own, and to give 
the church his own name. So that, not 
only is the expression "churches of 
Christ" justified, as applied to local con- 

iEph. 1:22, 23. »2 Cor. 11:2. • Eph. 5:25-27. 
132 



CHURCH 



gregations of believers; but "church of 
Christ," as a designation of the whole 
body of his people, lies implicit in its 
very constitution and history. The idea 
of it is not only Scriptural. It is insepa- 
rable from the relation of Christ to the 
church. 

It is Christ's relationship to the 
church that is emphasized by the use of 
this qualified name. The term is a proc- 
lamation. It announces the cause, of 
which the church itself is the effect. The 
church is the "called out." But it is 
Christ who calls out. The church is the 
building, but Christ is the Builder. The 
church is the spiritual temple. But 
Christ is the Spirit which both forms it 
and dwells in it. The church could not 
be, without Christ. It lives only in him, 
and by him. 

On the other hand, the significance 
of the church to Christ is emphasized. 
It is the body which he weaves about 
himself, through which he does his work. 
It is the indispensable channel of his life 
as it continues to go out to the world in 

133 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

saving power. It is eyes and lips and 
ears, and hands and feet, for him, as he 
pursues his ministry of salvation. It is 
the helpmeet for him in his work of 
building up a spiritual race. 1 It is the 
fullness of him that filleth all in all. 8 

Third — Church of God. This term 
is used in ten instances in the New Testa- 
ment, and only by the apostle Paul. 
There is a significance in the fact that 
he uses it so frequently in addressing 
Gentile Christians. Six of the instances 
are in the Epistles to the Corinthians. 
The Corinthian Christians were in the 
midst of a varied and sordid idolatry. 
They had themselves, in the old days, 
been "led away unto those dumb idols." * 
And the ruin of life which that induced 
is vividly portrayed.* They must remem- 
ber that now they belong unto God. They 
have been chosen of Him — foolish and 
weak and base and despised though they 
might have been. He has created them 
anew, and they are "of him in Christ 



1 Gen. 2:18. ■ Eph. 1:22, 23. «1 Cor. 12:2. M Cor. 
6: 9-11. 

134 



CHURCH 

Jesus." He has given them Christ, and 
has compensated all their poverty and 
nothingness by making him unto them 
wisdom and righteousness and sanctifi- 
cation and redemption. 1 Their heritage 
is a rich one, but it has its source and its 
reason in God, and their ultimate posses- 
sion is in him. "All things are yours." 
But "ye are Christ's; and Christ is 
God's." a It is the familiar thought, 
embodied in the promise of Christ when 
he assured the building of the church: 
"Ye shall know that I am in my Father, 
and ye in me, and I in you." 8 This 
gracious promise, given first to men of 
Israel, is fulfilled unto poor, outcast Gen- 
tiles also. They have been built into the 
church, and the church is the church of 
God. What a sheet-anchor against the 
sweep of the old tides of passion and 
superstition which might otherwise drift 
them back into the degradation of the 
idolatrous life! The name would help 
mightily in keeping their faith single and 
their hearts pure. 

M Cor. 1:26-31. "1 Cor. 3:21-23. 'John 14:20. 
135 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

The term also occurs in the Epistle 
to the Galatians; 1 and with a similar per- 
tinence. They had, in their old life, not 
known God, and had been in bondage to 
them that by nature are no gods. 2 They 
needed a powerful incentive to help them 
in the battle against the old lusts. 

Paul uses it also in writing to the 
Thessalonians, who, under his preaching, 
had turned to God from idols, to serve 
a living and a true God, and to wait for 
his Son from heaven. 8 

Outside of these instances, the term 
occurs only in the First Epistle to 
Timothy. 

Timothy was the son of a Gentile 
father. While his mother was a Jewess 
and he was evidently taught in the faith 
of Israel's God, his environment in his 
youth had been in the midst of idolatry. 
He was now, also, the evangelist in 
Ephesus. In that city and in all its 
vicinity, the worship of Diana the god- 
dess had been, for long, the dominating 
religion. Her image was said to have 



iGal. 1:13. a Gal. 4:8. s l Thess. 1:9, 10; 2:14. 
136 



CHURCH 

fallen down from heaven. Her temple 
was one of the seven wonders of the 
world. Her worship was perhaps the 
most splendid and seductive of the pagan 
cults. The chief glory of the city of the 
Ephesians was that she was temple- 
keeper to the great Diana, 1 The most 
dreaded calamity was considered to be 
that the temple of this noted goddess 
should be made of no account and that 
she should be deposed from her magnifi- 
cence, whom all Asia and the world wor- 
shiped. The most effective appeal to pop- 
ular passion was the necessity of guard- 
ing her honor. 2 

It was of the utmost importance that 
this young herald of Christ, in that 
stronghold of superstition, should keep a 
clear vision and a keen consciousness of 
the uniqueness and aloofness of the faith 
which he preached; and that the church 
in Ephesus should appreciate its true 
nature and high mission. Over against 
this absorption of Ephesus in the cult of 
the goddess, stood "the church of the liv- 



1 Acts 19: 35. ■ Acts 19:27. 
137 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

ing God." 1 There were the multitudes. 
Here were the few. There was the mass. 
Here were those who had been "called 
out." There was a dead idol, which could 
give to its worshipers no fellowship or 
blessing. Here was the living God, who 
had come to men in the person of his 
Son, through whom these had been built 
into him and made partakers of his life 
and power. There was error, blinding 
and enslaving its devotees; and the 
whole splendid ritual of the worship was 
a promoter and intensifier of that error. 
Here was truth, the truth as it is in Jesus 
Christ, and the church was its "pillar and 
stay," to uphold it and defend it against 
the dominant delusion. 

It is a position of superlative honor 
to which God has called the church. As 
his, it is the channel of his revelation. It 
has his message. The grace is given to 
it, through his ministers, to preach the 
unsearchable riches of Christ, and to 
make all men see what is the dispensation 
of the mystery which for ages hath been 



»'l Tim. 3: IS. 

138 



CHURCH 

hidden in himself. It is his purpose now 
to make known even unto the principali- 
ties and the powers in the heavenly- 
places, his manifold wisdom. And the 
church is the medium of this revelation. 
It was the purpose of the ages that this 
should be so — "purposed in Christ Jesus 
our Lord." 1 The church is not an acci- 
dent. It is not an unrelated thing in 
God's developing plans. It is the true 
objective of all the lines of divine reveal- 
ment. It is the crown of all institutions 
for the manifestation of God. It is in 
and through the church that all the 
infinite measures of divine power are seen 
at their maximum in human redemption. 
God has his true glory "in the church 
and in Christ Jesus unto all generations 
for ever and ever." 2 



Eph. 3: 8-11. a Eph. 3: 20, 21. 



139 



IX 

THE NAMES, AND CHRISTIAN 
EXPERIENCE 

BEYOND all names, those given to the 
followers of Christ are meaningful. 
Back of them stands an experience, and 
along with them goes an experience, 
unique in human life, and beyond all com- 
parison the highest and most vital. 

The experience of coming into the 
relationship which these various names 
designate, is a never-to-be-forgotten one. 
We may give it what name we choose — 
"conversion," "enlightenment," "change 
of heart," "new birth," "adoption." No 
term can fully express all it has meant 
to us. There are unspeakable things 
here. We have come to the consciousness 
of God. We have been made to feel his 
love, his truth, his grace, his forgiveness, 
his power. We have seen him in Jesus 

140 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

Christ, and have come to know God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. 

That experience is epochal. That 
knowledge is life eternal. 1 We have, in 
coming to it, passed out of death into 
life. 2 There has been indeed an enlighten- 
ment; for God, that said, "Light shall 
shine out of darkness," has shined in our 
hearts, to give the light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ. 8 There has been a "change of 
heart"; for these hard and impenitent 
hearts of ours have been melted into 
submission, so that we have become 
obedient from the heart to that form of 
teaching whereunto we were delivered. 4 
There has been a conversion, a turning 
unto God from the idols of our old life, 
to serve a living and true God, and to 
wait for his Son from heaven/ There 
has been a new birth; for we have been 
begotten again unto a living hope by the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
dead; 6 and we have been born of water 



^ohn 17:3. a John 5:24. »2 Cor. 4:6. * Rom. 2:5; 
6:17. B l Thess. 1:9. «1 Pet. 1:3. 

141 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

and the Spirit. 1 There has been an adop- 
tion, foreordained through Jesus Christ 
according to God's good pleasure and 
grace, which he freely bestowed on us 
in the Beloved. 2 

All this has been true of us — glori- 
ously true. But what does it all mean? 
Can human language tell the meaning of 
it ? The New Testament writers struggle 
with the precious burden of its signifi- 
cance. In words which the Holy Spirit 
teacheth, they convey to us what we may 
be able to grasp of it. "Behold what 
manner of love the Father hath bestowed 
upon us, that we should be called children 
of God." "That which we have seen 
and heard declare we unto you also, that 
ye also may have fellowship with us ; yea, 
and our fellowship is with the Father, 
and with his Son Jesus Christ." 4 

We have been redeemed, not with 
corruptible things, with silver or gold, 
but with precious blood, as of a lamb 
without spot — the blood of Christ. Fore- 
known before the foundation of the 



John 3:5. « Eph. 1:5, 6. »1 John 3:1. *1 John 1:3. 
142 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

world, he was manifested at the end of 
the times for our sake. Through him 
we are believers in God, who raised him 
from the dead and gave him glory. Our 
faith and hope are in God. 1 We are in 
God the Father and the Lord Jesus 
Christ.' 

This change is revolutionary. Life 
is altogether another thing with us. We 
have become dead to sin. We have 
become alive with Jesus Christ. Our 
life is hid with Christ in God. 3 We are 
new creatures in Christ Jesus. Old 
things are passed away/ We are out of 
the sinful life, out of its degradation, out 
of its power. Our old man was crucified 
with Christ — that the body of sin might 
be done away, that so we should no 
longer be in bondage to sin. B All things 
have become new with us. We are being 
transformed by the renewing of our 
mind, and are proving what is that good 
and acceptable and perfect will of God. 6 

It was a foretaste of this full and 



1 1 Pet. 1:18-21. M Thess. 1:1. » Col. 3:3. *2 Cor. 
5: 17. 8 Rom. 6: 6. « Rom. 12: 2. 

10 143 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

rich experience which men felt when they 
first saw Jesus. The Word was made 
flesh and dwelt among men, full of grace 
and truth, and men beheld his glory, 
glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father. 1 John the Baptist exclaimed, 
when he saw him: "Behold, the Lamb of 
God, that taketh away the sin of the 
world !" His disciples immediately - fol- 
lowed Jesus — drawn away from their 
first master by a new power. Coming 
into touch with him, they were conscious 
that they had found God. Andrew said 
to Simon Peter: "We have found the 
Messiah." Philip, when he had been 
drawn to him, said: "We have found 
him, of whom Moses in the law, and the 
prophets, did write." Nathanael, when 
he had seen hirn, said: "Thou art the Son 
of God; thou art the King of Israel." 2 
Peter voiced the feeling of all genuine 
believers in him when he said: "Lord, to 
whom shall we go? thou hast the words 
of eternal life. And we have believed 
and know that thou art the Holy One 



John 1: 14. * John 1: 29-49. 
144 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

of God." * Even the half -heathen Samar- 
itans said, "We have heard for ourselves, 
and know that this is indeed the Saviour 
of the world." 2 Life, with these, had 
become an altogether different thing, in 
their knowledge of Jesus. 

So is it always. The experience of 
coming to know Jesus and of being 
brought to God through him, is one the 
soul can not forget. How it burns itself 
into our consciousness, and abides a liv- 
ing flame, warming and lighting the whole 
stream of our life. It is not strange that 
men love to talk of their conversion. How 
vividly that event stood out in the con- 
sciousness of the apostle Paul — that time 
when it was the good pleasure of God, who 
had separated him, from his birth, to visit 
him even in his passionate opposition to 
Christ, to call him through His grace, and 
to reveal His Son in him, that he might 
preach him among the Gentiles. 3 He was 
ready to speak of that epoch in his life, 
to his own hostile countrymen, before 
crowned heads and bedecked officials, as 



John 6:68, 69. ■ John 4:42. a Gal. 1:15, 16. 
145 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

well as to the confidential friends of the 
new faith. And so the memory of it 
loomed large in Bunyan and in Wesley and 
in Moody, and the story of it added fire 
and force to the messages they gave to 
men. In every real Christian life it is a 
landmark in the soul's history. It is the 
passing out of darkness into light, out of 
despair into the realm of hope, out of 
condemnation into justification, out of 
bondage into the glorious liberty of the 
sons of God. Instead of the enmity and 
alienation which blighted our minds in 
the evil works of the old life, there is 
reconciliation and approval and peace. 
The soul has found its home, and is at 
rest. But, if the experience of coming 
into this high relationship is so precious 
and significant, what must be said of our 
enlarging experience as we go along in the 
relations indicated by the several names! 
It is always a privilege to sit at the 
feet of a great master. What a confi- 
dence we feel as we think of the stores 
of knowledge which lie in his mind, 
ready to be drawn on, and what a joy as, 

146 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

in response to our ignorance and need, 
the fountain sends forth its stream until 
we share with the teacher all his riches. 
To be a disciple of Jesus is to reach 
the climax of that rich experience. He is 
the Master of the masters. All the treas- 
ures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden 
in him. 1 We sit at his feet in utmost 
confidence that he is able to dispel our 
ignorance and to show us the Father. 2 
And, as he makes us his friends as well, 
all the barriers are down, and the way is 
open for our complete enlightenment. 

And how the fountain gushes ! What 
a broadening and deepening stream flows 
to us from the mind and heart of Christ ! 
Is not the Holy Spirit, which he gives 
unto us, the Spirit of truth? 8 Did he 
not say to his disciples, . "He shall teach 
you all things; he shall bring to your 
remembrance all things that I have said 
unto you; he shall guide you into all the 
truth; he shall teach you the things to 
come"? 4 The past, the present, the 



iCol. 2:3. 'John 14:8. 8 John 14:17. *John 14:26; 
16: 13. 

147 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

future, are here all assured. All the 
fountains of heavenly knowledge are here 
flowing. And, as we drink, we realize 
that Christ is sharing with us his treas- 
ures. As he knows the Father, so we 
come to know the Father. Indeed, the 
knowledge of Jesus Christ as our Teacher 
and Friend is knowledge of God. When 
Thomas made that pathetic request, 
which voices the deepest instinctive need 
of all our hearts, "Show us the Father, 
and it sufficeth us/' Jesus said to him, 
"Have I been so long time with you, and 
dost thou not know me, Philip? He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father." 1 It 
is in harmony with this that the mission 
of the Holy Spirit to us is to cause us 
to see and know Christ. He speaks to 
us, not from himself, but from Christ. 
He takes the things of Christ and shows 
them unto us, and so glorifies Christ. 
And, as we come thus to know Christ 
more fully, we come to know God. 

Out of our ignorance and blindness 
we are led into an ever-growing knowl- 



John 14: 8 : 9. 

148 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

edge. And in that knowledge there are 
all the potencies of good. It is through 
the knowledge of Him that called us by 
his own glory and virtue that we are 
granted all things that pertain unto life 
and godliness. 1 Life takes on a different 
aspect. We are able to see things as they 
are. The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the Father of glory, gives unto us a 
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the 
knowledge of him; the eyes of our heart 
are enlightened, so that we know what 
is the hope of his calling, what the riches 
of the glory of his inheritance in the 
saints, and what the exceeding greatness 
of his power to us-ward who believe. 8 
Knowledge leads on to knowledge, and 
we are ever more able to discriminate 
and make our way sure. So that we put 
to the test the things that differ — we 
approve the things that are excellent, and 
we go on our way, sincere and void of 
offense unto the day of Christ. 3 Being 
filled with the knowledge of his will in 
all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 



1 2 Pet. 1:3. a Eph. 1:17-19. 8 Phil. 1:9, 10. 
149 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

we are enabled to walk worthily of the 
Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in 
every good work. 1 As Christ shares 
himself with us, we are conscious of 
coming constantly unto all riches of the 
full assurance of understanding, until 
we know the mystery of God, even 
Christ; and in that knowledge enjoy 
eternal life. What an enrichment of life 
comes to us in living out the implications 
of the names "Christian" and "saint." 

A great conviction is a dynamic. It 
stimulates every power of the mind and 
heart. It clarifies thought. It kindles 
the feelings. It rouses the will. It 
brings the whole spiritual man into 
action, and all his powers into alignment 
with its subject. 

The Christian conviction is the 
mightiest of all. It involves the supre- 
mest issues ever presented to men. It is 
an acceptance of the truth, as against 
error. Jesus Christ is the Truth. All 
that opposes him, all that ignores him, 
all that denies or treats lightly his pre- 



iCol. 1: 9, 10. 

150 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

eminence and his claims, is error. In the 
Christian conviction Christ must have 
supreme place in all things. 

Thus it was with Paul. To him 
Christ was all in all. He had the name 
above every name — and to him every 
knee should bow, and every tongue 
should confess his Lordship. 1 Thus it 
was to Peter. There was salvation only 
in the Christ. No other name is given, 
under heaven, or among men, wherein 
we must be saved. 2 Thus it was with 
John. "And the witness is this, that 
God gave unto us eternal life, and this 
life is in his Son. He that hath the Son 
hath life; he that hath not the Son of 
God hath not the life." ' 

No words can describe the effect 
which such a conviction must have on 
life. It thrills. It wakens, like a trum- 
pet-blast. It stimulates, like a refreshing 
shower. It warms, like a genial blaze. 
It challenges all the powers of life to 
alertness and strenuous endeavor. It 
strengthens and stiffens the purposes and 



Phil. 2:9-11. » Acts 4:12. 8 1 John 5:11, 12. 
151 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

makes the believer rock-like and invin- 
cible. When it has become an abiding 
conviction it is a life-force which pours 
forth continual enrichment. 

When that conviction has led one into 
action, as it inevitably must do, the 
espousal of the cause of Christ follows. 
This sets before us a great field of 
endeavor. No life can reach its fruition 
without some worthy task. Our powers 
slumber and decay unless challenged and 
used. Great endeavor makes great life. 
We grow up to our ideals in striving to 
realize them. What we aim at makes us 
what we become. 

No enterprise has ever presented to 
men so imperial a challenge as the cause 
of Christ. It makes its appeal to all 
classes of men, and to all types of mind, 
and always with world-dimensions. It is 
a business, with the "talents" as capital 
and the whole world as the marketplace. 1 
It is a warfare, with the spirits of men 
as the battlefield, and the principalities 
and the powers, and the world-rulers of 



Matt. 25: 15. 

152 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

this darkness, and the spiritual hosts of 
wickedness in the heavenly places, as the 
foe. 1 And the weapons of warfare, not 
of the flesh, but mighty before God to 
the casting down of strongholds — imagi- 
nations, and every high thing that is 
exalted against the knowledge of God, 
and bringing every thought to the obedi- 
ence of Christ. 2 It is a propaganda, with 
"all the nations" and "the whole creation" 
as the territory, and the enlistment of 
disciples for Jesus as the objective. 3 
There is a wideness about it, and a glory 
about its purpose, that sweeps us out and 
carries us up to ever larger dimensions 
of life. We are conscious of a great 
fellowship. Jesus is the Captain of our 
salvation. His banner beckons us on- 
ward. His victory inspires us. His 
purpose moves us to heroic effort. His 
Kingdom is our ideal. 

This enlistment and absorption in the 
cause of Christ works out for us that 
ultimate meaning of the name "Chris- 



1 Eph. 6:12. »2 Cor. 10:3-5. "Matt. 28:19, 20; Mark 
16: 15, 16. 

153 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

tian" — character. Character is not an 
accident. It is not an endowment. It is 
a life-product. It is a result of stress 
and strain, of toil and tribulation, of 
choices and conflicts, of growth and 
maturity. Its quality is determined by 
the aims and objects we keep before us, 
and by the pathways and processes 
through which we seek to attain them. 
Christian character is a unique product. 
It grows only out of the Christian con- 
viction and the Christian enterprise. It 
does grow here — a daily growth, an 
intensifying growth, like a growing tree 
which is always expanding the parts 
already formed, and always adding new 
parts, until it stands mature, crowned 
with life-giving fruit. We are rooted in 
the precious faith in the righteousness 
of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
We add all diligence on our part, and in 
our faith we supply virtue; and in our 
virtue knowledge; and in our knowledge 
self-control; and in our self-control 
patience; and in our patience godliness; 
and in our godliness love of the brethren ; 

154 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

and in our love of the brethren love. So 
we are reaching the climax of character, 
where it becomes like the character of 
God. Here we are secure. Here we 
stand, without stumble or fall. Thus we 
pass into the eternal Kingdom. 1 

And all this is marked by that other 
peculiarity — separateness from the world, 
holiness unto God. No more striking 
contrast exists than that between the 
man who holds with firm and intense 
conviction the truth of Christ, and the 
unbelieving world. There is a deep chasm 
of separation. On the one hand there is 
light, and the believer walks as in the 
day. 2 He sees the things that are invis- 
ible. 8 He makes his choices with the long 
view. He is content to wait on God. 
His life is hid with Christ in God, and 
he abides Christ's appearing for his own 
vindication/ He is joyful in his faith, 
with a joy that knows no measure. 6 He 
is not afraid, neither troubled by the evils 
about him.' He is steadfast, immovable, 



*2 Pet. 1:1-11. M Thess. 5:4-6. » Heb. 11:24-29. * Col. 
3:3, 4. «1 Pet. 1:8. «1 Pet. 3:14. 

155 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

always abounding in the work of the 
Lord, forasmuch as he knows that his 
labor is not in vain in the Lord. 1 

On the other hand, the god of this 
world hath blinded the minds of the 
unbelieving, that the light of the gospel 
of the glory of Christ, who is the image 
of God, should not dawn upon them. 2 
They walk in darkness. They see only 
the things that are near. 3 If they seek 
good, it is only the present good; on the 
other hand, too often, being past feeling, 
they give themselves up to lasciviousness, 
to work all uncleanness with greediness. 4 
They are separate from Christ, alienated 
from the commonwealth of Israel, stran- 
gers from the covenants of the promise, 
having no hope, and without God in the 
world. 5 They are the sport of every 
malign power, "like the surge of the sea 
driven by the wind and tossed." 6 

On the one hand there is the growing 
likeness to God. The new man is being 
renewed unto knowledge after the image 



M Cor. 15:58. a 2 Cor. 4:4. 8 2 Pet. 1:9. * Eph. 4:19. 
5 Eph. 2: 12. 6 Jas. 1:6. 

156 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

of him that created him. 1 He walks by 
faith, and, with unveiled face beholding 
as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, is 
transformed into the same image from 
glory to glory, even as from the Lord the 
Spirit. 2 He anticipates, with joyful con- 
fidence, the time when Christ shall be 
manifested, and, with the impediments 
of the earth-life done away, he shall see 
him as he is and be entirely like him. 8 

On the other hand, there is a dire 
progression in sin. Men shut their eyes 
against the light and hold down the 
truth in unrighteousness. Knowing God, 
they glorify him not as God, neither are 
thankful. They become vain in their 
reasonings, and their senseless heart is 
darkened. Professing themselves wise, 
they become fools. They exchange the 
truth of God for a lie, and worship and 
serve the creature, rather than the 
Creator. They refuse to have God in 
their knowledge. They become filled 
with all unrighteousness, wickedness, 
covetousness, maliciousness. They be- 



iCol. 3:10. »2 Cor. 3:18. »1 John 3:2. 
157 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

come without understanding, covenant- 
breakers, without natural affection, un- 
merciful. They pass on to a blatant, 
defiant championship of evil, and, know- 
ing the ordinance of God, that they that 
practice such things are worthy of death, 
not only do the same, but consent with 
them that practice them. 1 The nobility 
of life has vanished here; all is vanity 
and emptiness. These are "clouds with- 
out water, carried along by winds; 
autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, 
plucked up by the roots; wild waves of 
the sea, foaming out their own shame; 
wandering stars, for whom the blackness 
of darkness hath been reserved forever." 

The separation is as wide as the 
universe. The sainthood of the Chris- 
tian life lifts us to sublime heights. 

And who can record the joys of son- 
ship, and the rich pleasures and benefits 
of brotherhood, in the family of God? 
It is a royal estate into which we are 
brought. The infinite One is our Father. 
That means, first of all, infinite love, 



Rom. 1:18-32. « Jude 12, 13. 
158 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

following us and surrounding us in all 
the way. And the infinite love is the 
guarantee of all good. 

What a peace and confidence that 
establishes in our hearts! How it drives 
away the worries that eat us up. How 
it breeds and fosters trust. How it 
makes us strong to endure. How it 
helps us to look at life, not piecemeal, 
but whole. How it anchors us against 
the tides of discouragement and de- 
spair. 

God's love is not, with his children, 
an untried thing. It is his love that has 
begotten them. They have come into 
the new life at its bidding. His love 
sought them when far from him. His 
love paid the price of their redemption. 
"God so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth on him should not perish, but 
have eternal life." 1 That is the revelation 
of God's love, both of its character, and 
of its measure. We can not doubt its 
genuineness. God commendeth his own 



1 John 3 : 16. 
11 159 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

love toward us, in that, while we were yet 
sinners, Christ died for us. 1 If he has 
done that to make us his children, will 
he not continue his love, now that we 
are his children? Yea. Surely, if, while 
we were enemies, we were reconciled to 
God through the death of his Son, that 
same love will finish the work so begun. 
And, since he who died for us now lives 
again, we, being reconciled, shall be 
saved by his life. There is abundant 
reason why we should rejoice in God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ, through 
whom we have now received the recon- 
ciliation. 2 Christ is the inviolable pledge 
of every blessing. We have him. The 
rest is secure. "He that spared not his 
own Son, but delivered him up for us all, 
how shall he not also with him freely 
give us all things ?" 8 

This does not mean, however, that 
we shall escape trial and burdens, and, 
perhaps, suffering and sorrow. Fatherly 
love has various functions. Its aim and 
end is always the welfare of the child. 



1 Rom. 5:8. * Rom. 5:10, 11. » Rom. 8:32. 
160 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

Its method and expression may vary 
with the needs. 

And how various are our needs. 
Sometimes it is for assurance and encour- 
agement. And God assures us by his 
Spirit of our standing with him — chil- 
dren and heirs, and joint-heirs with his 
first begotten. 1 Sometimes, on the other 
hand, it is for rebuke, and curbing of 
our wild fancies, and discipline into the 
fitting spirit and attitude of children. 
Then his chastening rod falls upon us, 
and he sends us down into the valley of 
humiliation. But it is the chastening of 
love — our Father's blows; and the 
shadows come, that we may appreciate 
the sunshine all the more. We have no 
right to rebel against his chastening. 
Nor have we any reason to regard it 
lightly, nor to faint when we are reproved 
of him. It is all a part of his gracious 
ministry to us — a necessary part — if he 
would see his great object in us achieved. 
It is he whom the Lord loveth that he 
chasteneth; and often it is only after he 



iRom. 8: 16, 17. 

161 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

has scourged us that he can receive and 
approve us. He is dealing with us as with 
sons, and what son is there whom his 
father chasteneth not? They indeed for 
a few days chastened us, as seemed good 
to them. God chastens us for our profit, 
that we may be partakers of his holiness. 1 
This, after all, is one of the joys of 
sonship. When filial love sees the loving 
purpose of it all, and when the whole- 
some effect of it comes flooding our 
lives, as with healing after wounds and 
pain, the trials that our Father leads us 
through are seen to be among the most 
precious of our experiences. They let 
us into the secret of sonship, as perhaps 
nothing else can do. They bring us to 
a new consciousness of God's Father- 
hood, and result in new fitness for son- 
ship with him. So, we can rejoice in 
our tribulations: knowing that tribula- 
tion worketh steadfastness ; and steadfast- 
fastness, approvedness ; and approved- 
ness, hope; and hope putteth not to 
shame; because the love of God hath 



Heb. 12: 5-10. 

162 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

been shed abroad in our hearts through 
the Holy Spirit which was given unto 
us. 1 Thus, our Father, through his lov- 
ing use of the rod, cultivates within us 
the peaceable fruit of righteousness: 

There is an unspeakable joy in the 
consciousness of growth in the life of 
sonship. To feel that, daily, Christ is 
being formed in us; 8 and to know that 
Christ in us is the hope of glory. 4 To be 
conscious of a growing likeness to God 
our Father. To know that we are caught 
up into his life, so that we can say: "It 
is no longer I that live, but Christ that 
liveth in me." 5 To be coming evermore 
into a clearer vision of the abiding things, 
and to be enabled thus to appraise the 
things of the- present at their true value. 6 
To walk, in the midst of death, in the 
strength and calm of eternal life. 7 To 
anticipate the inheritance reserved in 
heaven for us, ready to be revealed in 
the last time, incorruptible, undefiled, un- 
fading, and to know that the farther 



'Rom. 5:3-5. ■ Heb. 12:11. « Gal. 4:19. * Col. 1:27. 
5 Gal. 2:20. 8 2 Cor. 4:16-18. 7 2 Cor. 5:1-10. 

163 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

earth's prizes recede from us, the nearer 
this heavenly prize comes to us. 1 All 
this is the acme of personal human enjoy- 
ment. 

And when, in the midst of all this 
exquisite personal experience of God as 
our Father, we remember that all his 
children are equal heirs with us, and 
sharers in these high privileges and 
unspeakable joys, the cup overflows. The 
commonwealth of the Christian life is a 
sublime conception. Before it, the bar- 
riers of race and caste and class go 
crumbling down. From it, the impulses 
of reconciliation and brotherly interest 
and ministry and harmonious fellowship 
spontaneously spring. The joy in son- 
ship is personal. The joy in brotherhood 
is social. The experience of the Chris- 
tian life is widened by the whole breadth 
of the community of believers. Time 
limits sink out of sight. We are fellow- 
heirs with patriarchs and prophets and 
apostles and martyrs, and the whole com- 
pany of more humble and obscure, but 



M Pet. 1:3-9. 

164 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

not less worthy and acceptable, sons of 
God, in all the ages. 

And what shall we say of that experi- 
ence indicated by the name "servant"? 
Is there anything remaining of possible 
felicity to be allotted to this? 

Yes, here is where all the gifts of 
God to us come to their fruition. Shall 
a great endowment have no purpose ? 
Shall a great stream sink in the sand? 
Shall an ocean steamship, equipped in 
perfection and laden with valuables, stand 
and rot in the harbor? Christ has made 
us his disciples and friends, his believers 
and saints, his children and brethren, 
with all the rich endowments and potent 
impulses which these relationships in- 
volve, that we may serve with him. It is 
in service that we realize ourselves. It 
is in service that we achieve. It is in 
service that the real meaning of our 
relations with Christ comes to be under- 
stood and appreciated. It is only in 
service with Christ that knowledge and 
faith and conviction and character and 
sanctification, and the consciousness of 

165 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

sonship and the rapture of brotherhood, 
can come to maturity. 

And so, to be servants of Christ — 
bondservants — channels of his life, imple- 
ments of his activities, yokefellows with 
him in his work, is the crowning experi- 
ence, because it involves all others and 
brings them to fruition. 

There is yet another thrill, a supreme 
one, in this already indescribable sensa- 
tion of the Christian life. It is the expe- 
rience of membership in the church of the 
living God. Here individual interest gives 
place to corporate feeling. The church is 
one. There is a solidarity in it that makes 
every member in it conscious that he is 
also a member of every other member. 1 So 
each one is responsible for the whole, and 
submissive to the whole. Self-interest 
loses itself in community interest. Life is 
at once limited in its liberties and enlarged 
in its activities. Service becomes infinitely 
significant. The individual is multiplied 
without limit, his strength magnified to 
the dimensions of the whole. 



iRom. 12: 5. 

166 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

What dignity is conferred in the fact 
that this whole is the body of Christ and 
moves by his direction and achieves by 
his power. What glory is in the fact 
that this church is the church of God, 
through which he makes known, to all 
his creation, his wisdom and his glory. 
What boundless satisfaction in the con- 
sciousness of being used, in common with 
all God's people, for these great purposes 
of its Head. Here our personal joy in 
sonship finds its crown in a joy that is 
communal. If that was a river, bearing 
us majestically on its current, this is an 
ocean, whose depths we can not fathom, 
and whose shores we can not see. 

It is seen that, under these New Tes- 
tament names, all the essential experi- 
ences of the Christian life are included. 
Together, they designate all the relations 
into which God calls men in Christ Jesus, 
and cover the full fruits of redemption 
in human life through him. To live up 
to the measure of these names is to come 
into, and abide in, the perfect life. 



167 



X 

THE NAMES, AND CHRISTIAN UNITY 

NEW TESTAMENT names are com- 
mon names. They are family names. 
They are all applicable to all Christ's 
followers. No one of them is a partisan 
name. No one of them is intended to 
distinguish its wearer from other fol- 
lowers of Christ. Each one identifies 
its wearers with the rest of Christ's 
people. 

Every follower of Christ has a right 
to all these names. Not only so. Upon 
every follower of Christ is the obligation 
to wear all these names. For, has he not 
entered into the several relationships 
designated by them? 

He has entered the school of Christ. 
Then, he is a disciple of Christ. He has 
been received by the great Teacher into 
a personal and intimate relationship. 

168 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



Then, he is a friend of Christ. He has 
the conviction of the Christhood and 
divine Sonship of Jesus; he has espoused 
the cause of Jesus as his own; and he is 
striving to grow into the Christlike char- 
acter. So, he is a Christian. He has 
been separated from the world unto this 
fellowship with Christ. He is, then, a 
saint. He has been born of God. Then, 
he is a son. He is in the family of God, 
so is a brother to all the children in the 
family. He has been bought with a 
price, so is not his own, but a bond- 
servant to Him who bought him — owned 
and directed by another. Each of these 
names implies for him the relationship 
which it designates, and each of the 
relationships implies its appropriate 
name. His duty is to wear these names 
and to live up to what they imply. 

The honest wearing of these names is 
a great incentive to the life they indicate. 
The name "wife," worn by a virtuous 
woman, stimulates her to wifely conduct. 
The name "mother" has magic in it to 
raise woman to heroic sacrifice and ser- 

169 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

vice. The name "president," or "king," 
carries with it a constant admonition to 
faithful administration. So, there is a 
reason in New Testament names, grow- 
ing out of the need and duty of their 
wearer, and a stimulus to worthy achieve- 
ment. 

On the other hand, these names desig- 
nate all one can be as a follower of 
Christ. There is no vital relationship to 
Christ conceivable which is not covered 
by these names. There is no possibility 
of growth in the Christian life that they 
do not provide for. All spiritual experi- 
ences are comprehended in them. They 
stand for the whole range of spiritual re- 
lationships, and for all heights and 
breadths of spiritual activity and devel- 
opment. 

These names are uniting names. It 
may be that there are varieties of Chris- 
tian experience. All Christians do not 
develop along identical lines, nor find 
themselves at all times at parallel points 
of progress. But all have common stand- 
ing and equal privileges in Christ. Their 

170 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



possibilities are similar, though their per- 
formance may differ. "Citizen" expresses 
possibilities common to all who wear that 
name, though some may not enter so fully 
as others, nor in the same order as others, 
into the qualities and experiences of citi- 
zenship. So the names of Christ's people, 
indicating their common standing with 
their Lord, and the possibilities that are 
equally before them all, as well as experi- 
ences into which all have entered, bind 
them together, unite their minds and 
hearts in him who has, without partiality, 
received them. This unity is a seven-fold 
unity, and should be without seam or 
schism. 

It is evident that no other names than 
these are needed to describe the Christian 
life. New names are only needed when 
new things are to be designated. The 
qualities and relationships of the spiritual 
life, in both its individual and its collec- 
tive manifestations, are provided for 
here. 

If other names than these are adopted, 
or worn, by Christian people, it is only to 

171 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

designate some relationship, or interest, 
which is not inherent in the Christian 
life; some extra interest, not common to 
the Christian relationship. Such a name 
designates a partizan interest; is made 
necessary by it. It is a partizan name. 
It thus stands for a breach of Christian 
unity, and is a means of maintaining and. 
accentuating the same. It proclaims a 
defection from the ideal and the will of 
Christ. 

There is a peculiar aptitude to this kind 
of defection. There is a multitude of 
extrascriptural names applied to the fol- 
lowers of Christ. Many of them contain 
no suggestion of New Testament usage 
or sanction. They are, one and all, par- 
tizan names. They have come because a 
multitude of partizan interests have been 
allowed to encroach on the unity of the 
family of God. The church has been dis- 
rupted, and the fragments have been 
named with characteristic names. These 
names, in their turn, have solidified the 
fragments and made the healing process 
difficult. Partizan interests are stubborn- 

172 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



ly held, and carry their partizan designa- 
tions along with them. It is a process 
that grows. Almost every day records 
the birth of some new party, committed 
to some partizan propaganda, and adopt- 
ing some name that will adequately de- 
scribe it. The beautiful and expressive 
names of the New Testament are shoved 
into the background, or, at best, yoked 
up with names that are alien to them and 
that continually overshadow them in pop- 
ular usage. It is plainly evident that the 
apostolic injunction, to keep the unity of 
the Spirit in the bond of peace, has been 
largely made inoperative and impossible 
by the substitution of human names for 
those divinely given, and that it will not 
be possible to carry it out until the people 
of God are willing to abandon all such 
designations, and become content to wear 
only those which God has given. 

A tendency equally pernicious with 
that spoken of, and more discreditable, 
if possible, is to use the family names in 
a partizan sense, to designate partizan 
interests. It is an amazing evidence of 

173 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

perversity that the majority, of these com- 
mon names have been appropriated to 
designate partizan movements and inter- 
ests in Christian history, and are, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, used, not in 
their common meaning, but with special 
and restricted significance. 

The term "disciple" has come to be 
dignified with a big "D" and applied thus, 
in a denominational sense, to a group of 
people, numerous if considered by them- 
selves, but few when compared with the 
whole company of believers; and it is be- 
ing adopted with increasing complacency 
by many of these people as their especial 
designation, distinguishing them from 
others. Nothing is more evident than 
that this is a perversion of this name. 

In a similar way we have a group of 
people who call themselves, and are 
known in the religious world as, 
"Friends." No one would deny that these 
good people are friends of Jesus. But, 
are they friends in any sense in which 
others of his people are not his friends? 
The name is evidently, with them, a de- 

174 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



nominational name. In this use of it, its 
common, family use is lost sight of. It 
is perverted to a partizan use. 

So there is a group which persists in 
its title to the name "Christian," applied 
especially to the church, but implied as 
the designation also of the individuals in 
that communion; and, professedly, this 
use of the name is a partizan, denomina- 
tional use, distinguishing them from 
other bodies. 

There are "Saints" also, of several 
varieties, but all using the term in a par- 
tizan sense, in direct violation of its orig- 
inal intention. It is, with them, a dis- 
tinguishing name. Instead of identifying 
them with other Christians, their use of 
it signalizes their difference from others. 
The effect of it is to emphasize division 
rather than unity. 

Several groups appropriate the term 
"Brethren," either unmodified, or with 
some qualifying phrase, but all with the 
restricted, distinguishing, partizan mean- 
ing. 

Thus, five of the seven names con- 

12 175 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

sidered have been segregated from their 
high place as designations of things that 
are common to God's people, intimations 
of experiences and relationships and in- 
terests that are common and inexpres- 
sively significant, to uses that are partizan 
and perverse. If we should presently 
have two other groups arise, one to ap- 
propriate the name "Children," and the 
other the name "Servants," with like sec- 
tarian significance, the process of pros- 
titution would seem complete. And who 
can tell, in this age of new cults, how 
soon this climax of perversion may be 
reached ! 

No less has been the tendency to mis- 
use the name "Church." 

We nave one great ecclesiastical or- 
ganization, comprising, however, not half 
the true believers, claiming to be "the 
church" ; and smaller groups making sim- 
ilar claims. 

We have numerous groups, ' claiming 
each to be the "Church of Christ." And 
other groups each claiming to be the 
"Church of God." 

176 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



Manifestly, in all these cases, the 
name is used in a partizan sense — as 
separative and not comprehensive ; as dis- 
tinguishing these groups from others, not 
identifying them with others. And just 
as manifestly, this use of the names is 
false, and these efforts to claim them in 
an exclusive sense an absurdity. 

It is very evident that the lost unity 
of the church can only be restored by a 
return to the true use and significance of 
the New Testament names. 

This can not be done by fiat. It can 
not be wholly done, if at all, as a matter 
of conference or legislation or compro- 
mise. It can only be done by the cultiva- 
tion of the relationships indicated by the 
names. 

Unity in Christ is a matter of life. 
It comes not from ourselves, but from 
him. It is possible only through the 
channels which he has opened, and by 
which he gives himself to us. These 
channels of approach are indicated by 
the names he has given us. If we 
keep the channels clear, he will come 

177 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

to us in his fullness and unite us. 
All the provisions of Christ for his 
people have this as their object. If he has 
given apostles and prophets and evangel- 
ists and pastors and teachers, these are 
for the "perfecting of the saints." They 
are ministers, looking to the building up 
of the body of Christ. They seek the at- 
tainment of "the unity of the faith and 
of the knowledge of the Son of God," the 
growth in unity "unto a full-grown man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of Christ." They seek to make 
the Christian proof against the power 
and distraction of all partizan interests; 
those winds of doctrine which toss us 
about and carry us to and fro, blown on 
us by the sleight of men, in craftiness, 
after the wiles of error. They would 
have us grow up in all things into him, 
who is the head, even Christ. It is 
from him that all the body is fitly framed 
and knit together through that which 
every joint supplieth, according to the 
working in due measure of each several 
part. It is thus that the body makes 

178 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



increase unto the building up of itself 
in love. 1 

We must be disciples of Jesus in the 
true sense. All other masters must be 
dismissed. "One is your Teacher." Has 
it not been because we have listened to 
the counsels of men that we have become 
divided? There is nothing in the teach- 
ing of Jesus that can divide his people. 
His teaching unites. For the true dis- 
ciple, there can be no other authority. 
"If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly 
my disciples ; and ye shall know the truth, 
and the truth shall make you free." 

We must be genuine friends of Jesus. 
That means that he comes first. Nay, it 
means that he has the exclusive place in 
our hearts. No partizan interest, no 
party loyalty, can be allowed to intrude 
on that sacred compact. He invites us 
into the closest and most confidential re- 
lations with himself. How can we drag 
any alien interests with us as we go? 

We must hold the great conviction of 
the Christian faith, the Christhood and 



Eph. 4: 11-16. 

179 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

divine Sonship of Jesus, with genuine 
and earnest devotion. What a power a 
great conviction has to subdue and fuse 
all the hearts that hold it into one! And 
was there ever a conviction so mighty as 
this to break down division walls and 
bridge gulfs of estrangement, to recon- 
cile and weld one-time enemies, and 
make the whole community of believers 
instinct with a common faith and pur- 
pose? It gathers up within itself all the 
high significance of history, all the deep 
meanings of religion, all the throbbing 
hopes of life. It lifts him who cherishes 
it out of the realm of the uncertain, the 
partial, the incidental, and gives him 
grasp of the sure, the essential, the com- 
plete. No man who holds that conviction 
intelligently and supremely can be a 
trifler or a partizan or a bigot. All men 
who hold it sincerely are impelled toward 
brotherhood and common interest. The 
creed of the Christ is a uniting creed. 

And what must be said of the cause 
to which Christ summons his people. A 
great task is only second to a great con- 

180 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



viction, as a unifying power. There is 
small need to cite instances of how a 
great enterprise has rallied men and 
nations, shaking them out of their selfish- 
ness, inspiring them with a common pur- 
pose, leading them to heroic sacrifice and 
resistless effort towards a common end. 
But has any cause so challenging as that 
of Christ ever bidden for man's heart? 
Can we stand in the face of it and cherish 
our little schemes, and fritter away our 
lives on our paltry interests, and magnify 
our party claims? Above all, can we 
drag these impedimenta after us on to 
the field of action, where every open 
door, every crying need and every im- 
pending peril is sounding loud the call 
for instant and utter consecration to the 
one task assigned us ? It is small wonder 
that, on the heathen field, where petty 
partizan establishments have been left 
behind, and where the task of the church 
presents itself in its naked bulk and sin- 
gleness, Christian men and women grav- 
itate toward united effort, no matter by 
what name they have been formerly 

181 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

called. The wonder is that Christian 
workers in the home fields can so mis- 
judge the magnitude and urgency of their 
task as to waste their powers on interests 
that are not essential to it. When the 
espousal of the cause of Christ shall have 
become as hearty and genuine on the part 
of all his people as it was on the part of 
the early disciples, this can no longer be 
true. 

Beyond all this is that character into 
which Christ would have his people con- 
tinually grow. It is likeness to himself. 
And that, for his people, is unity. 

And shall not the saints of God, who 
have been sanctified by the "one Spirit," 
and are indwelt and led and enriched by. 
him, as members of the one body of 
which he is the life and power, live up 
to that holy estate? How impossible is 
the thought of division among those who 
are led by the Spirit of God. It is 
among the works of the flesh that we 
find it. The fruit of the Spirit is love, 
joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, good- 
ness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. 

182 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



These things are binding things, the very 
ligaments of life in the body of Christ. 
Can the children of God continue to 
dishonor their Father, by unholy quarrels 
and distracting rivalries in the bosom of 
the family? Must it not be that a true 
appreciation of what it means to be born 
of God will smite to death all partizan 
feeling in our hearts? We are children 
of God. But "God is love." We are 
members in the family, and all God's 
children are our brethren. Can we do 
less than to be "all likeminded, compas- 
sionate, loving as brethren, tenderhearted, 
humbleminded ; not rendering evil for 
evil, or reviling for reviling; but con- 
trariwise blessing"? 1 This is the true 
family spirit. It must be cultivated. 
But it can only grow out of an increasing 
appreciation of our relationship to God 
as his children, and to our brethren as 
fellow-partakers with us of his grace. 
We must come to know our place with 
him. Then shall we know and honor 
both our privations and our privileges, 



1 1 Pet. 3:8, 9. 

183 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

as children of God. Division is denied 
us there, out of our Father's love. Our 
blessed privilege is to be "perfected to- 
gether in the same mind and in the same 
judgment." 1 Our high duty is "to keep 
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
peace." 8 

We must, too, recognize and honor 
our servanthood. The thought of our 
past bondage to sin, of our helplessness 
and hopelessness in it, should humble us 
to the dust. The fact that Christ 
redeemed us from that lost condition by 
his own blood, should awe us into grate- 
fulness, and fill us with joy. But, thus 
we are, all of us, his purchase, bought 
with a price, not our own, but his for 
possession and for service. 

How utterly repugnant to this rela- 
tionship is the thought of Christians 
being divided, designating themselves by 
divisive names, devoting themselves to 
partizan interests! We have no right to 
do thus. We can not do with ourselves 
as we please. Christ is our Master. 



1 Cor. 1: 10. »Eph. 4: 3. 
184 



CHRISTIAN UNITY 



There is but one keyword to our lives — 
service. 

That is a uniting word. We wait for 
the word of command. Our supreme 
question is: "Lord, what wilt thou have 
me to do?" We move in obedience, not 
to a multitude of wills, but to one will; 
and in obedience to that our unity is 
perfected. 



185 



XI 

THE NAMES, AND THE CHRISTIAN 
HOPE 

NEW TESTAMENT names are for- 
ward-looking names. The relation- 
ships they describe have a future. Their 
significance is not static, but progressive. 
The Christian life is a growing life. Its 
terminus is in the distance. 

As a Teacher, Jesus is ever unfolding 
the truth, leading his disciples to new 
heights and broader visions, so that we 
grow in the grace and knowledge of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 1 

The possibilities here are beyond 
limit. Paul prays that the God of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, 
may give unto his people a spirit of wis- 
dom and revelation in the knowledge of 
him; that having the eyes of their heart 



*2 Pet. 3: 18. 

186 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



enlightened, they may know what is the 
hope of his calling, what the riches of the 
glory of his inheritance in the saints, and 
what the exceeding greatness of his 
power toward those who believe. 1 It is 
a great objective that is placed before the 
disciple, in the field of knowledge. How 
expressive the terms used! "Spirit of 
wisdom and revelation. " What sugges- 
tions of ripening and expansion and 
progress, in scholarship, are here. "Eyes 
of the heart enlightened." Could there 
be a more pertinent description of that 
sympathy with the subject which is a 
prime condition of all scholarship, and 
that accuracy of vision and fullness of 
understanding toward which all true 
scholarship looks? "That ye may know." 
Here is the gratifying objective of dis- 
cipleship — certainty. 

And what a sublime content has this 
certainty ! 

"The hope of his calling." 

"The glory of his inheritance in the 
saints." 



Eph. 1: 17-19. 

187 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

"The exceeding greatness of his 
power towards those who believe." 

Is not this knowledge an immeasur- 
able achievement for the disciple? Who 
can tell what is the power of Christ to 
keep and enrich and perfect the man who 
believes in him? Great power is needed. 
The believer is in the midst of perils. He 
has a warfare within him which threatens 
him, spirit against flesh and flesh against 
spirit. 1 It will be a strong arm that shall 
rescue him and keep him. 

The disciple of Jesus comes into the 
experience of that power, and finds it 
exceedingly great. More than that, he 
is given an understanding of its full 
measure. It is the power of the infinite 
One. It is according to that working of 
the strength of his might — what dynam- 
ics are here! — which he wrought in 
Christ, when he raised him from the 
dead, and made him to sit at his right 
hand in the heavenlies, far above all rule 
and authority and power and dominion, 
and every name that is named, not only 



1 Gal. 5: 17. 

188 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



in this world, but also in that which is 
to come, and put all things in subjection 
under his feet, and gave him to be head 
over all things to the church, which is 
his body, the fulness of him that filleth 
all in all. 1 

Not all at once does the disciple come 
into this fullness of knowledge. But this 
is the glorious objective toward which 
the great Teacher leads him on. 

One result of this growth in the dis- 
ciple is knowledge of "the hope of his 
calling." 

There is a distinctively Christian 
hope. Israel as a people had its hope, 
which distinguished it from the nations 
around it. The hope of Israel was based 
upon the covenants of promise which 
God had made with the fathers and con- 
firmed unto their children. There were 
two great objectives in that hope: first, 
the possession of the land of Canaan as 
a home; and, secondly, the coming of the 
Messiah, the seed of Abraham, to bless 
them, and, through them, to bless the 



Eph. 1 : 19-23. 

189 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

whole world. The first of these objec- 
tives had been realized when the liberated 
people had been put in possession of the 
land under Joshua. And yet there must 
have been an important sense in which 
that hope was constantly deferred, and, 
so, constantly cherished. For the posses- 
sion of the land was but partial from the 
beginning. And, throughout their his- 
tory, their tenure of it was made con- 
stantly uncertain and indefinite, by the 
encroachments of their enemies. Hostile 
tribes about them, and great nations more 
distant, crowded upon them, overran 
their heritage, wrested portions from 
their domain, carried them captive to 
distant lands, made them bondservants 
even in their own country. And this 
failure to realize to the full that first 
part of their hope, made them the more 
eager that the second part should be 
fulfilled. They came to conceive of 
the Messiah as a national deliverer 
who should rescue them from the 
power of their enemies, and confirm 
them in the undisputed possession of 

190 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



the land promised to their fathers. 

For the realization of this hope they 
looked to Jehovah their God. It grew 
out of his covenants. It rested upon his 
promise. Surely he would bring it to 
pass. 

So, Jehovah came to be called "the 
hope of Israel. ,, * He was their Saviour 
in the time of trouble. He had been the 
hope of their fathers. 2 "Happy is he 
that has the God of Jacob for his help, 
whose hope is in Jehovah his God: who 
made heaven and earth, the sea and all 
that in them is; who keepeth truth for 
ever. 

Israel's hope centered in a person. It 
involved many things. It was all com- 
prehended in one thing — that they had 
Jehovah, a covenant-keeping God. 

In contrast to Israel were the nations 
about them. They were alienated from 
the commonwealth of Israel, strangers 
from the covenants of promise, having 
no hope, and without God in the world. 4 



*Jer. 14:8; 17:13. a Jer. 50:7. «Ps. 146:5, 6. * Eph. 
2: 12. 

13 191 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

The Christian hope is a larger hope. 
It involves many things, and all of them 
vital. It is the hope of righteousness. 1 
It is the hope of salvation. 2 It is the 
hope of the resurrection. 3 It is the hope of 
eternal life. 4 It is the hope of the glory 
of God. 5 It involves not only the destiny 
of the individual. The whole creation 
waits upon its fulfillment. "For I reckon 
that the sufferings of this present time 
are not worthy to be compared with the 
glory which shall be revealed to us-ward. 
For the earnest expectation of the crea- 
tion waiteth for the revealing of the 
sons of God; (for the creation was sub- 
jected to vanity, not of its own will, but 
by reason of him who subjected it;) in 
hope that the creation itself also shall be 
delivered from the bondage of corruption 
into the liberty of the glory of the 
children of God." 6 

Like the Old Testament hope, the 
Christian hope is centered in a person, 
Jesus the Christ, God manifest. It grows 



1 Gal. 5:5. a 1 Thess. 5:8. "Acts 23:6; 26:7. 4 Tit. 1: 
2; 3:7. 5 Rom. 5:2. « Rom. 8:18-21. 

192 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



out of what he has done and what he 
promises to do. As Jehovah was the 
hope of Israel, so the Lord Jesus Christ 
is our hope. 1 

The hope is to be fully realized with 
the appearing of Christ. As Israel's hope 
contemplated his first coming, the Chris- 
tian hope contemplates his second coming. 
That is to be the climax of all blessing 
to the Christian. "Wherefore girding 
up the loins of your mind, be sober and 
set your hope perfectly on the grace that 
is to be brought unto you at the revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ." "For the grace 
of God hath appeared, bringing salvation 
to all men, instructing us, to the intent 
that, denying ungodliness and worldly 
lusts, we should live soberly and right- 
eously and godly in this present world; 
looking for the blessed hope and appear- 
ing of the glory of the great God and 
our Saviour Jesus Christ." 8 

How this hope is fed and buttressed 
by the word of God! If Israel's hope 
rested on God's covenant with the 



x l Tim. 1:1. "1 Pet 1:13. "Tit. 2:11-13. 
14 193 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

fathers, the Christian's hope rests no less 
surely on the covenant promises of 
Christ. "Let not your heart be troubled," 
he says to his people; "believe in God, 
believe also in me. In my Father's house 
are many mansions; if it were not so, I 
would have told you; for I go to prepare 
a place for you. And if I go and pre- 
pare a place for you, I come again, and 
will receive you unto myself; that where 
I am, there ye may be also." l 

This is Christ's "covenant of prom- 
ise" with his people. That covenant was 
confirmed by the heavenly visitors imme- 
diately on Christ's departure from earth. 
"Why stand ye looking into heaven?" 
they say. "This Jesus, who was received 
up from you into heaven, shall so come 
in like manner as ye beheld him going 
into heaven." 2 

It was in the faith of this covenant 
with their Lord that the apostles went 
out on their mission. This coming again 
of their Master was a ringing note in 
the gospel they preached. It was the 



John 14: 1-3. " Acts 1: 11. 
194 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



crowning glory in that vision they flung 
before the eyes of men to induce them 
to turn to him. The cross was held 
before them, with its burden of sacrifice, 
sufficient to cover all their sins, and its 
story of love so great as to assure them 
a welcome. The resurrection was 
affirmed, an undeniable evidence of vic- 
tory, a demonstration of power which 
even the grave could not defeat. The 
coronation was proclaimed, an announce- 
ment of God's eternal purpose in Jesus 
Christ fulfilled, in defiance of human 
perversity and satanic hate. The Holy 
Spirit was promised in the name of the 
King, a life-power, ensuring to the 
believer "seasons of refreshing from the 
presence of the Lord," and daily victory 
along the way. Thus did they challenge 
men's thoughts to God's highway of 
mercy and forgiveness and adoption and 
spiritual enrichment and power. But this 
alone would have been an incomplete 
vision. The climax of the divine induce- 
ment to men was the covenant promise 
of Christ's return for his people. "And 

195 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

that he may send the Christ who hath 
been appointed for you, even Jesus ; 
whom the heavens must receive until the 
times of restoration of all things, where- 
of God spake by the mouth of his holy 
prophets that have been from of old." 
It was this complete vision that gave 
the gospel its power. To the Jew it was 
the fulfillment of the hope of Israel, in a 
larger and more glorious sense than he 
had ever anticipated; and it was, in 
addition, the bringing in of that "better 
hope, through which we draw nigh unto 
God." a To the Gentiles it was the open- 
ing of a door that had, for long, been 
closed to them. To the people who had 
been without hope, and without God in 
the world, "the hope of the gospel" 3 was 
preached; and they "turned unto God 
from idols, to serve a living and true 
God, and to wait for his Son from 
heaven, whom he raised from the dead, 
even Jesus, who delivereth us from the 
wrath to come."* This is "the hope of 



1 Acts 2:22-38; 3:18-21. ■ Heb. 7:19. « Col. 1:23. *1 
Thess. 1:9, 10. 

196 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



his calling." This is the "living hope," 
unto which we are begotten by the resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 1 
It is the all-inclusive hope, summing up 
in itself and making inevitable all the 
spiritual hopes of Christian hearts. The 
resurrection is ensured in it. For is it 
not at his coming that they that are 
Christ's shall be made alive? 2 The life 
eternal shall be confirmed in it. For the 
dead shall be raised incorruptible, and 
then shall come to pass the saying that 
is written, Death is swallowed up in vic- 
tory. 3 It will usher us into the glory of 
God. For will not the Son of man come 
in his glory, and all the angels with him ? 
And shall not the blessed of his Father 
be called to inherit, with him, the king- 
dom prepared for them from the foun- 
dation of the world? 4 Is it any wonder 
that the apostles proclaimed it to sinners, 
and that they kept the saints perpetually 
in mind of it through their Epistles, and 
that the Apocalypse makes it the pivot 



M Pet 1:3. »1 Cor. 15:23- "1 Cor. 15:52-54. * Matt 
25: 31-34. 

197 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

on which the most sublime drama of 
world destiny that has ever been con- 
ceived, is made to turn? It is vital in 
the Christian faith. Without it all the 
wonders of the gospel story are but as 
a pyramid without an apex. With it, all 
that goes before it has its justification, 
and all that comes after it has its guar- 
antee. It gives meaning to all that pre- 
cedes it, as the ripened fruit gives mean- 
ing to root and branch and bloom. It 
makes faith vibrant, and love triumphant. 
With this hope in us, we can not drift. 
For it is an anchor of the soul, both sure 
and steadfast, entering into that which is 
within the veil, fastening us to eternal 
things. 1 With it we will not walk in 
darkness, nor stumble, nor sleep. We 
will watch and be sober, putting on the 
breastplate of faith and love. It will be 
a helmet upon our head, to protect us 
from evil. 2 With it we will be kept from 
the defilements of the flesh. For we 
expect that when he shall be manifested, 
we shall be like him. We shall see him 



1 Heb. 6:18, 19. M Thess. 5:1-8. 
198 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



even as he is — and he is pure. Even so, 
with our hope set upon him, must we 
purify ourselves, that we may be ready 
for him. 1 We are to let it have its full 
sweep in our lives; rejoicing in it; 2 
abounding in it; 8 showing diligence unto 
the full assurance of it; 4 "continuing in 
the faith, grounded and stedfast, and not 
moved away from the hope of the gos- 
pel." 6 Thus may we be presented holy 
and without blemish and unreprovable 
before Him. 

It is in the light of this hope that 
New Testament names are seen in their 
supreme significance. It will be in the 
realization of that hope that the relation- 
ships they designate will come to fruition. 
The disciple will come, in that, to perfect 
knowledge. His life here is a progress 
in the knowledge of Christ. But it looks 
toward perfection. "We know in part, 
and we prophesy in part; but when that 
which is perfect is come, that which is in 
part shall be done away." We see, now, 



*J John 3:2, 3. * Rom. 5:2. • Rom. 15:13. * Heb. 6: 
11. B Col. 1: 22, 23. 

199 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

in a mirror, darkly ; but then face to face. 
We know, now, in part. We shall know, 
then, fully, even as also we have been 
fully known. 1 That full knowledge is 
not possible this side of the fulfillment of 
the Christian hope. We enter eagerly 
into the race for the knowledge of Christ 
Jesus our Lord. The excellency of it 
attracts us, and moves us to give up all 
things and count them but loss, that we 
may gain it. We "gain Christ," as 
Teacher, with abounding joy. But we 
find that, to "know him, and the power 
of his resurrection, and the fellowship 
of his sufferings, becoming conformed 
unto his death," which is the essence of 
that knowledge we are seeking, is some- 
times a long road, and has its terminus 
only where we shall be made to share his 
own victory over sufferings and death. 
We, too, must "advance into the out- 
resurrection, that from among the dead," 
and that climax is where He appears for 
his people. So we must go on. We have 
not already attained the objective, nor 



1 Cor. 13:9-12. 

200 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



reached perfection. That for which we 
have been laid hold on by Christ Jesus is 
yet to be laid hold on by us. So, like the 
racer, we must forget the things that are 
behind, and stretch forward to the things 
which are before, and press on toward 
the goal unto the prize of the high calling 
of God in Christ Jesus. If we would be 
perfect, we must be thus minded. And 
for the enlightenment of our imperfect 
mind, God grants his sufficient revelation. 1 
What a glory it will be to the disciple to 
have broken through the mists and clouds 
that obscure the sun, and to have reached 
the summit where vision is unobstructed 
and the whole landscape lies in light! 
The mazes of our earthly pilgrimage will 
there have all converged upon the broad 
highway. The puzzles will all be solved. 
The immature thought which has now 
tantalized us, now tempted us to halt on 
our way, will have merged into perfect 
knowledge. We will have inherited to the 
full with Him in whom all the treasures 
of wisdom and of knowledge are hidden.* 



»Phil. 3:8-15. « Col. 2:3. 
201 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

There the friend of Jesus will come 
to the full meaning of friendship. Its 
glorious meaning is measurably impressed 
on us here. It is a wonderful thing to be 
made a confidant of Jesus Christ ; to have 
him make known unto us all things that 
he himself has heard from the Father. 1 
What a treasure is here committed to us. 
Have we not felt the thrill of pleasure, 
of grateful joy, as some friend has let 
us into some secret of his own heart, 
something that he could not tell to others, 
because they could not understand? And 
what heavenly joy fills our hearts as 
Jesus talks to us as though in secret 
places, and tells us the deep mysteries 
which the Father has committed to him. 
These are things that Jesus can not tell 
to every one. "For the natural man 
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
God: for they are foolishness unto him." 
He could not understand them. There 
is a preparation of heart necessary to 
the appreciation of the things Jesus has 
to tell, "because they are spiritually 



John 15: 15. 

202 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



judged." Only he who has become a 
friend with Jesus can receive them. 1 One 
of these great secrets is the fact of his 
coming again. He does not tell us the 
exact time, for he himself has not heard 
that from the Father. 3 But the fact he 
has told us. How striking the difference 
between the friends of Jesus and the 
unbelieving world, in respect to this! 
The natural man can not receive it. It 
is foolishness unto him, indeed. He can 
see no need of it, no way to it, no prob- 
ability of it. He walks in his lusts and 
scoffs at the Christian's hope. "Where 
is the promise of his coming? for from 
the day that the fathers fell asleep, all 
things continue as they were from the 
beginning of creation." So he says, 
"Peace and safety." He walks in dark- 
ness, and is drunken, and sleeps. 

But the friend of Jesus is not asleep. 
He is not in darkness. He is a son of 
light and of the day. He walks in the 
awareness of his Lord's approach. He 
crowns himself with the hope of salva- 



1 Cor. 2: 14, IS. * Matt. 24:36. »2 Pet. 3:3, 4. 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

tion; salvation to which God has ap- 
pointed him through the Lord Jesus 
Christ; and which is to be realized at his 
appearing. 1 

But with all the fruit of friend- 
ship in the present, there awaits the 
believer a higher joy when the event 
shall transpire. When the Lord himself 
shall descend from heaven, with a shout, 
with the voice of the archangel, and with 
the trump of God, the friends of Christ 
shall meet him. The dead in Christ 
shall rise first, and those that still live 
shall together with them be caught up in 
the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, 
and so they shall ever be with the Lord. 2 
How richly shall the long absence of the 
great Friend be compensated for in that 
union! How the meanings of his love 
which have escaped our poor vision here, 
will stand out in that clear light. We 
shall know then, as we can never know 
until we see him in his glory, the immeas- 
urable significance of his announcement: 
"I have called you friends." 



Thess. 5:3-9. "1 Thess. 4:16, 17. 
204 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



And, will it not be in that same hour 
that we shall understand in its fullness 
all that "Christian" signifies? That will 
be the hour when the true significance 
of Christ will be realized. The convic- 
tion of the Christian may be ridiculed 
now; the cause which he serves may be 
discounted; his character as a follower 
of the Christ lightly esteemed. And this 
misjudgment of the world is always hard 
to bear, and not infrequently discourag- 
ing. But when his Lord shall come in 
glory and great power, and all the angels 
with him, the faith of the Christian, and 
his faithfulness, will be alike vindicated. 
And he himself will enter into the amaz- 
ing significance of what, in feebleness 
and faltering, he had given himself to 
cherish and to achieve. 

It is unto the issues of this event that 
the saints are separated. What a mean- 
ing will be given to holiness, when we 
shall see Him as he is! That was a 
great vision that the old prophet saw 
by the side of the river, when before 
him was a man clothed in linen, whose 

205 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

loins were girded with pure gold of 
Uphaz, whose body was like the beryl, 
and his face as the appearance of light- 
ning, and his eyes as flaming torches, and 
his arms and his feet like unto burnished 
brass, and his voice like the voice of a 
multitude. It was not surprising that 
there remained no strength in him, and 
that his own comeliness was turned in 
him into corruption. 1 Nor is it strange 
that a later seer, when he saw one like 
unto a Son of man, whose head and 
whose hair were white as snow, and his 
eyes as a flame of fire, and his feet like 
unto burnished brass, and his voice as 
the voice of many waters, with seven 
stars in his right hand, and a sharp two- 
edged sword proceeding out of his mouth, 
and his countenance as the sun shining in 
his strength, should have fallen at his 
feet as one dead. 2 What shall it be when 
this glorious Being shall break out of the 
unseen and come on the clouds of heaven, 
where every eye shall see him, and shall 
call his people forth to meet him and be 



1 Dan. 10: 4-8. " Rev. 1: 13-17. 

206 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



with him? Is not the whole logic of the 
separated life exhibited in this? How 
shall men meet him if they have walked 
with the world and their garments are 
spotted with the flesh ? 1 But if they have 
washed their robes, and made them white 
in the blood of the Lamb, how shall they 
fail to join that triumphal throng which, 
with waving palms and exulting voices, 
shall proclaim him? 8 It is to this joyful 
end that the God of peace himself sancti- 
fies us wholly, even that our spirit and 
soul and body may be preserved entire, 
without blame at the coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ* 

And surely to the children of God, the 
brethren in his family, this is a crowning 
event. They have been begotten unto a 
living hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead. That hope involves 
an inheritance, incorruptible, undefined 
and unfading. It is laid up for them in 
heaven, a salvation ready to be revealed 
in the last time, ensured to those who, by 
the power of God, are guarded through 



ijude 23. »Rev. 7: 9, 10. «1 Thess. 5:23. 
207 



NEW TESTAMENT NAMES 

faith. It is a matter of great rejoicing, 
as it is viewed in the distance. Even 
severest trials are cheerfully borne, and 
but purge the faith, as gold is tried in the 
fire, that the testing of the faith may be 
found unto praise and glory and honor 
at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 And 
when that revelation shall have taken 
place, shall not these heirs of God and 
joint-heirs with Jesus Christ be found in 
possession of their heritage? Yea; for it 
is from the Lord they shall receive the 
recompense of the inheritance; for they 
serve the Lord Christ. 2 

Not less significant will this climax be 
to the servant of Christ. Christ's coming 
is to be not only a great ending, but also 
a glorious beginning. He is coming 
to take his great power and to reign. 8 
And in that age-long Kingdom in which 
his sway shall be from sea to sea, and 
from the rivers unto the ends of the 
earth, there will be call for many-sided 
service. How glorious will be the reali- 
zation of our redeemed life in the service 



Pet. 1:3-7. » Col. 3:24. »Rev. 11:17. 
208 



CHRISTIAN HOPE 



of the King! Here will be the sublime 
issue of all the powers of our salvation. 
Complete in knowledge and in love and in 
commitment to him, as well as in spiritual 
fitness and equipment, our Lord will set 
us tasks commensurate in reach and dig- 
nity with the high place to which he has 
brought us, and we shall serve him day 
and night in his temple. 1 

'Rev. 7: 15. 



209 



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